


this life, pale and grey

by jmcats



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Blind Zayn, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, OT5 stuff, and quite a bit of fluff, there's some narry too, ziam smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-26
Updated: 2014-01-26
Packaged: 2018-01-10 02:04:13
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 38,255
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1153463
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jmcats/pseuds/jmcats
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Maybe we don’t fall in love with our eyes – just by touch because, little do you know Zayn Malik, you didn’t fall in love with that chap when you saw him.  You fell in love when he first touched you.  How fucked up is that?’</i>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>(re: Zayn is left temporarily blind after an accident and the others try to help him survive it all -- and try to help him realize he's in love with Liam, too, but that doesn't seem plausible)</p>
            </blockquote>





	this life, pale and grey

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this to shake off my writer's block. I don't know if it worked or if it's any good but it just felt good to _write_ so I'll take that as a win. It's written after days and days of Bon Iver, Cider Sky, and John Mayer. Blame them.
> 
> This fic is definitely for everyone who's been sending me messages on Tumblr, whispering _'don't give up'_ when I thought I would.
> 
> WARNING: I am not very good with medical terminology and the workings of the human body. Some of this might not make sense because of that but it's fiction, so I took some liberties. I hope that I did it some justice but I know nothing of blindness so forgive me if it's not accurate.

_‘The thing is, my friend, we’re all going to stumble and fall someday.  We’re all gonna fall in love unexpectedly one day.  Whether you want to or not, it’s gonna happen.  And who cares if we miss the fact that it was love at first sight or not?  Maybe we don’t fall in love with our eyes – just by touch because, little do you know Zayn Malik, you didn’t fall in love with that chap when you_ saw _him.  You fell in love when he first touched you.  How fucked up is that?’_

 

/*/

 

His first thought is death is a lot like breathing – the way your lungs expand, the race of your heart, the way it’s hardest underwater or when you’re falling in love.  There’s a march of machines in his ears, the scramble of voices in the distance, Harry’s distinct groan when something scares him, and then an unfamiliar voice telling someone ‘ _he’s alive but the head trauma seems to have affected him in undeterminable ways at the moment, still the blindness doesn’t seem permanent as there is no direct corneal damage and this will take time –_ ‘

His second thought is _he’s alive_.

His third and fourth thought get captured somewhere in his lungs, the burn incessant and the ache over his skin crawling towards his chest, and then _oh_ –

_He’s blind_.

His fingers shake over foreign sheets, everything across his skin is cold, and his feet shift restless in a bed that feels too small, too stiff, too unlike home.  There’s a hand on his shoulder that feels nothing like Niall’s and words scattered through the room that sound nothing like Louis and his teeth find his bottom lip on _instinct_ rather than through vision because, fuck, he can’t see _anything_.

There aren’t spots of broken color, riptides of the spectrum, an explosion of kaleidoscopic wonder.  Just inky darkness that he sees behind his eyelids when he’s sleep – not when he’s batting thick eyelashes, eyes wide open, the throb in the back of his head definite and defined.  He reaches for something, _anything_ and comes back empty-handed and his chest catches fire under the roll of Harry’s whimpers, the chase of sound through his ears rather than the visual scope of his eyes.

It’s stupid, really, how the first thing he thinks of is _his four boys_ ; not his mum or family or Ant and Danny.  And Harry’s voice – ‘ _And what about_ Niall _?  Can we see Louis, yet?_ ’ – isn’t strong enough for him to latch onto.  He just wants Niall cuddled to his left, Louis’ head in his lap, Harry’s longer fingers somewhere in the thickness of his hair, Liam’s lips just across his neck when he laughs at something particularly stupid until he’s fused to Zayn’s right side and –

He can’t think and he feels nauseous and the shadows across his eyes feel suffocating on levels he could never quite describe.

His first real breath sounds cracked and his voice is lifeless in his throat when he tries to speak until long, thick fingers shift into his hair and that’s Harry.  _His Harry_.  The one with the bed of curls and the eyes like glowing emeralds and the kind of cherry pink lips that he can see with his eyes closed.

But he _can’t_ now.

“Breathe, Zayner, just _breathe_ for me, okay?” Harry rushes into his ear, the roar of his breathing like the ocean in a seashell.  His fingers scramble on the sheets again for something and they’re met halfway into his oblivion by Harry’s, tangling together, anchoring him to the depths of the sea.

His skin turns to ice at his next thought – _Niall_.  Sweet, goofy, adoring Niall in the front seat of the van, turned around in his seat just to reach back and ruffle Zayn’s hair while Radiohead blared over the cheap sound system.  Dyed blonde hair still fluffy beneath a vintage snapback and spread strawberry lips from too much candy while Zayn thumbed through stupid messages on his phone.  Restless, jumpy Niall who was just along for the ride because Zayn and Louis wanted fresh ink before the next tour stop, new ways to mark up their skin and call upon each other in _brotherhood_ , a vaccine to this endless burn of forgotten city after city.  Unaware Niall who didn’t _brace for impact_ or hesitate when Louis screamed or –

His intake of oxygen gets caught on the top of his lungs and his chest expands so wide from the nervous toxins and the tremble of his bottom lip.

“Nialler,” he drags out under hollowed breaths that don’t quite circulate through his system.

There’s a pause, deafening in its blur through his mind and he can smell copper before he realizes he’s chewed his lip raw.  He swallows against the blood, against the strain of his muscles when he tries to curl into Harry’s touch.

“Alive,” Harry stutters, scratching dull nails over his scalp like Morse code, like the words that are too heavy for his tongue.  “Minor scrapes, a bruised shoulder.  Fucking laughed all the way through the morphine and X-rays, the knob.”

Something slips methodically through his system – like the first few pulls of a cigarette after hours onstage and adrenaline soaking his cells – and whatever is coiled reticently around his spine loosens for a few breaths.

“Tommo,” he chokes out, still curled into himself because he doesn’t even remember what city they’re in this time – _Chicago?  Detroit?  Raleigh?_ – and he can’t escape this pull on his muscles when he realizes that, possibly, this won’t end.

Harry clears his throat, drawing closer, his warmth moving over Zayn’s skin until the bed dips and an arm is slung around his shaking shoulders.

“Raising hell because he can’t leave his room and they had to give him stitches,” Harry says a little too calmly because he’s the ease of a sunset, the dormant hum of birds in the evening.  “But he’s fine, Zayn, I promise.  Liam is with – “

The undertow in his lungs, the stillness of his fingers on Harry’s hip feels so relevant.  He never learned how to breathe underwater, even though Liam tried to teach him and he quit halfway through the lesson because ‘ _people_ die _without oxygen, Liam, you should know that’_ but he knows how to float and he knows the pull of Liam’s smile when he accomplishes that much.  And that’s what this feels like – learning to reteach his body how not to react to the thought of _him_.

To the thought of Liam.

“Is he – is he mad?” he stumbles out, swallowing against the rush of bile in his throat and the thickness of his tongue against the roof of his mouth.

Harry’s chuckle is so warm, so incredibly familiar that Zayn’s bones slacken and his fingers shift up Harry’s side – he’s wearing that ugly flannel shirt Niall bought him a few cities ago and Zayn knows it by touch, the scratchy material itching beneath his fingertips.

“He’s right pissed with you lot,” Harry says casually, the lift of his laugh racing over the beeping machines, the click of oxygen, the drip of drugs sliding through Zayn’s veins.

Zayn nods, teeth clambering against his lip again even though he’s certain he’s split it and the sharp taste of blood on his tongue is nothing compared the acidic flavor of _loss_ –

Loss of vision, loss of focus, loss of four dumb boys crowded around him with hands everywhere and their laughter saturating his heart.

“Is he – can I see – “

His words slide like cracked glass down his throat, painfully slow, and the whine in Harry’s voice crashes over his skin.  He grimaces, Harry clutching tighter around him and he misses half of the doctor’s soft, stern words about _temporary blindness_ and _amaurosis fugax_ and _conversion disorders_ when his heart speeds up, the pound a thunderstorm in his ears.  His fingers clutch at the sheets, tug roughly at the unforgiving material until he blinks against the warm tears that slip down his cheeks.

“It’s okay, Zayner,” Harry tries to say over the tunnel of sound that keeps him distracted.  It doesn’t help though he tries to smile at nothing because he can’t _see_ Harry, only _feel_ his fingers tighten around Zayn’s wrist, just below the microphone and above the splattered ink.

He slips down the rigid bed, shoulders slumping, stomach tightening around the push of medication.  The throb in his head feels dull compared to the sting of his skin – the pieces Harry’s not touching.  He swallows back a sob and turns away, Harry’s hip pressing into the small of his back.  Fingers continue to drag lazily through his hair until he’s dizzy and drowsy and he can’t help the way he wishes it was a different set of hands on him, a set of matching chevrons in his eye line, the drift of pinker lips across his shoulder, the comforting drag of a soft voice in his ear, prickly hairs from a buzz cut beneath his palm, a crinkled set of eyes opposite him in this sterile bed.

It’s illogical and disastrous but all he thinks about is never seeing that goofy, crooked smile across the room and the way blush stains Liam’s cheeks beautifully anytime he realizes that Zayn’s watching him with as much affection as he throbs with.

He falls asleep on that thought alone, fingers pushing over the sheets without a Liam to grab onto.

 

/*/

 

He’d always heard that when you lose one of your senses, the others are heightened to another immeasurable degree.

He hates how much that’s true.

There’s an uncertainty sinking through his nervous system when he shifts on a stiff mattress, fingers pushing at the immoveable material, craving his bed back home.  He’s not sure if he’s awake or still lulled into this oblivion by the morphine or fentanyl or possibly paracetamol and he hates how he knows what each of them mean now.  He hates that he knows the chill of a hospital room across his arms and the thin material of a gown over his chest and the measured click of a heart monitor in his ears.

He knows he’s awake when his eyelashes flutter rapidly over his cheekbones, the first pull of post-traumatic oxygen through his throat.  He licks at dry, chapped lips, the cut still centered in the middle of his bottom lip.  There’s still a defining darkness across his eyes and he shuts them quickly like it’s a dream.

It’s not.

The whimper rattling in his throat is quiet compared to the other machines that click and pulse and vibrate through his ears.  The metallic smell of the room clouds his lungs, the cottony taste at the back of his throat irritating.  The rumble of snoring in a corner of the room, distant, reminds him of a bungalow years ago with four young boys and the world on their shoulders, though they’d never know it.  He knows its Harry because it’s consistent purr, the little catch in his throat when he breathes too deeply.  There’s a smaller body pressed firmly to his back, an arm thrown over his hip, and he smiles to himself – _Niall_.  He’s certain just by the whiff of body spray – Axe or Old Spice or something horribly pungent – that attacks his senses when he drags in a hollowed breath of stale oxygen.

He can hear the buzz of ‘Mr. Brightside’ somewhere close, Louis’ favorite ringtone, and the television hums quietly about the accident – ‘ _Earlier today, One Direction members Niall Horan, Zayn Malik, Louis Tomlinson were involved in a horrific accident caused by a drunk driver, leaving all three hospitalized.  Not many details are available other than the driver of their van being killed upon impact and the van they were riding in being totaled upon impact.  As more details become available…_ ’ – until it’s muted and the ache beneath his skin is ever present when he realizes he’s missing –

“We’re all here.”

The unintentional whimper in the back of his throat disables his lungs and he freezes at the voice he’s known in the dark, under a pile of blankets with their feet brushing and a Superman graphic novel dividing them on a hotel bed.

He can almost pick apart the smile in Liam’s tone, a little too far but still here.  His teeth catch on his lip again, a corner of it instead of in the center where it’s already bruised, he’s convinced.  His fingers crawl across the unfamiliar sheets again like he’s desperate to know, to feel, to be certain of –

Thick fingers meet him at the halfway, twisting around his and squeezing.  A gasp slips past his lips like that first breath after the accident, like the way it did that first time he really saw Liam smile at him – two years ago, around a piano, practicing harmonies and Liam teaching him the structure of his diaphragm and how to sing from the top of his voice rather than from the strain of his chest.

The tug at his lips into a frown is evident until the bed creaks and dips and a spare hand eases into his hair.  He shakes, inadvertently, before scooting closer to the warmth, to the security he hasn’t touched in hours.  Calloused fingers trip over his scalp, a little skittish at first until they’re sure and calming.  Until they’re the anchor Zayn needs, the one that keeps him steady amongst rough waters.

“I’m sorry,” he mutters into a thick comforter drawn over his shoulders, into the even thicker pillow that smells nothing like that one on the tour bus – the one that reeks of Liam’s cologne and his favorite vanilla-scented body wash and _Liam_.

The soft rush of Liam’s laughter seeps over him until his shoulders loosen.  Liam’s jeans brush against his bare legs, his trainers dragging over the arch of Zayn’s foot and he wants to admonish Liam like he does all of the other boys for keeping their shoes on in the bed.  He wants to poke at Liam’s chest and accuse him of being a shit liar this morning when he _promised_ Zayn, under a pink sky and the wave of sunlight that hampered his vision just a little, that today would be good.

Today would be great.

Today would be the day where he and Zayn get lost in the city, watch _Thor_ for the _fifth_ time after eating bad takeaway, and he’d tell Zayn something important.

Zayn thinks nothing could be as important as Liam’s smile after he laughs and the crinkle of his eyes when Zayn tries to tell a joke and the way their fingers look when they brush intermediately in the dark while they watch films, talking quietly while the others slumbered around them on a too small hotel bed.

Fingers push through his hair, tighten around his own on the bed, and he stops moving forward when soft lips press to his hairline.

“Shut up,” Liam mumbles, his smile pressed to Zayn’s forehead.  “You wore your safety belt and it was no fault of yours, Zayn, it’s okay.”

He swallows, dips his chin until Liam’s nose is pressed into his hair, the slices where Zayn remembers his blonde streak standing out so sharply being.  His toes push at the cuff of Liam’s jean to brush a bare ankle, closing his eyes because the darkness is too loud now.

“They say it’s temporary, man but what if it’s not and I – “

Liam makes a disapproving noise that drowns out Zayn’s _‘I never see you again’_ but the words still feel inked to his skin when Liam tugs at the short hairs on the nape of his neck.  There’s newborn stubble on Liam’s chin, dragging pleasantly over Zayn’s temple and he’s making soft sounds to hush Zayn’s labored breathing.

“It’ll come back, mate,” Liam promises, even though his voice is strained and a bit wavering.  “You’re gonna see again and then we’ll watch _the Avengers_ until Louis threatens to rip off our dicks.  We’ll watch every sunset while you smoke and you’ll see Niall’s stupid grin when the crowd screams for you.”

Fingers not belonging to Liam spread over his hip and Niall nuzzles closer in his sleep, warm and happy and so unaware to the way Zayn stiffens against him.  He sniffs, blinking at unwanted wetness across his eyelashes and those lips – Liam’s lips – kiss a rush of _‘you’re okay, mate’_ over his brow.

Liam’s thumb presses to a spot of skin where Zayn remembers the tattoo artist inking a yin-yang when he was younger, unaware of where any of this was going.  But he knew these four boys, in their dormant state and their constant need to _touch, grab, pull_ each other into the abyss, were his Zen.

His peace of mind.

His tug of war with a strong grip on his heart and a soft brush over his bones.

His fingers trade unforgiving sheets for the hair on Liam’s forearm, trying to remember where those four thick arrows stood out so sharply over tan skin.  They find Liam’s pulse – rapid but steady – and Liam twists his arm just enough to guide him in the right direction.  He abandons vulnerability for a smile, a choked laugh when Liam’s fingers brush his knuckles and lead him toward forever.

“Paul has already cancelled our next few shows and the doctors want to keep you here for a few days, just for observation,” Liam explains, his voice tender and quiet, the opposite of the harsh machines and Harry’s garbled breathing.  “Lou tried to buy out the floor so we could all stay but they refused him.  I think he destroyed some rather expensive equipment afterwards.”

Zayn snorts, his nose wrinkling, his lips crooking upward.  He keeps his eyes closed, eyelashes flickering against his skin with every inhale.  Liam’s fingers push through his hair again and he knows it’s wrecked, fucked out and just the way Liam likes it –

He remembers a morning too long ago in a city he might recall with hair wax in his palm and Liam shoving his hand away.  Reflexive memory stills on the moan from Liam’s lips, the pout of Zayn’s own until Liam crowded close behind him, fixing his collar in the mirror before whispering, _‘you don’t have to be perfect for them.  I think you look brilliant like this.’_

He smiles gently, cheeks hot and probably painted an awful pink at the thought of walking around half the day with his hair undone and fringe over his brow and Liam smiling at him, secretly, during every interview like Zayn was some work of art to be admired.

“Will you stay?” he asks with an impatient bottom lip pinched between white teeth.  He tangles his fingers in Liam’s shirt – the fabric soft but he’s know quite sure which one it is until he rubs at the decal in the center, the lightning bolt standing out and he knows it’s the red Flash one he bought Liam in Los Angeles, after a day of singing too loudly to Chris Brown and drinking slurpees right into back-to-back brain freezes.

Something relaxes in his bones, down the first few vertebras of his spine when Liam snorts, toes off his trainers until the rubber soles thud against the cold floor.  Dull nails scratch right along his arm – against the _ZAP_ and the crossed fingers, across the outline of a dove on the back of his hand – and their legs tangle beneath that uncomfortable blanket wrapped around them.

His nose bumps against Liam’s throat when Liam shifts closer, Niall following unconsciously.  “I wouldn’t be anywhere else, Zayn,” Liam whispers, straining his neck until Zayn’s lips brush over his collarbone.  They shiver together, synchronized and completely accidental, but Liam doesn’t draw back and Zayn chases his skin because, well, it’s Liam.

He’s nothing like this with the rest of them – their touches quainter, purposeful, meant to comfort or remind each other of their gravity.  But Liam is different, always has been.  He’s a force of nature within Zayn, the eye of the storm, the rush of something elegant that fuses into his cells.  He’s _Liam_ and Zayn’s never been able to find a proper definition or adjective or theory to what that means.

“You’re thinking too hard.  Stop, you’re making wrinkles,” Liam laughs, those fingers in his hair somewhere across his face now, rubbing at his brow.  “I wish you knew what your face looked like right now.”

He thinks it’d hurt a lot more coming from Louis or Harry, maybe Niall, but the words don’t bite as much when combined with Liam’s giggle.  They don’t remind Zayn, harshly, that he _can’t_ see.  He _won’t_ know what his face looks like.  He _shouldn’t_ cry at that notion.

Instead, the words soothe down his skin and he laughs with Liam, succumbs to Liam’s touch and the woven dizziness of the medication until he’s yawning softly.  He clutches against Liam’s shirt when he stirs, a quiet roar of _‘don’t go’_ and _‘I won’t sleep without you’_ and _‘this isn’t going to last forever but it feels that way’_ until Liam budges up and pulls Zayn from Niall into his own chest.

“’m not going anywhere,” Liam whispers, the flick of his smile so defiant in his voice now.  “Even if this bed is stiff and uncomfortable.  I hate hospitals.”

_Me too_ , he thinks, breathes the words into Liam’s slow lifting chest.  His nose drags beneath the collar of Liam’s shirt and brushes gently across skin he knows repetitively but not intimately –

_Not yet_ , he hopes but that feels daft because he and Liam have never been _like that_.

And _never_ weighs across his tongue like a brick, fingers twisting in soft cotton and legs curling around Liam’s until he can bleed that feeling from his system.

“Sleep, man,” Liam shushes with a sweet snicker that plays an interesting melody with Harry’s snores, Louis’ mumbling, Niall’s harsh breaths.

His senses are attacked by the scent of vanilla and the damp musk of a day without showering, from both he and Liam, and the soft sounds of Liam inhaling, exhaling.  He can hear the hammer of his own heart, the steady push of Liam’s, and his tongue tastes the forgotten tears from earlier across his chapped lips.  His fingers absently slide beneath the hem of Liam’s shirt to stroke over Liam’s hip, where his jeans ride too low and the edge of his boxer-briefs are tight on his skin.

“Zayn,” Liam hisses, fingers skimming down Zayn’s spine.

Zayn nods, the cold of the room trying to surround them until Liam tugs him closer.

“I’m glad you’re okay,” Liam mumbles into Zayn’s hair, the words like the still curve of a wave on the ocean.  “For the most part, I mean.”

Zayn ignores the last few words attached and the waver in Liam’s voice and the way the drugs leave him feeling lightheaded.  He concentrates on the pattern of Liam’s breathing and the unceremonious stroke of his fingers across Zayn’s shoulder until he no longer feels like a shipwreck.

He only feels Liam and, for now, it keeps this unsteady monster in his chest from escaping and reminding him he won’t know what Liam looks like in this moment.  Or any moment.

 

/*/

 

Zayn only knows its morning by the stroke of sunlight across his cheek and the loud chatter surrounding him when he stirs from his sleep.  He blinks _hard_ a few times, waiting, hoping, and cringes at the thick, inky shadows across his eyes.  He gasps on a breath, quick and painful, before sitting up.

The room spins, even if he can’t see it, and his stomach lurches at the dreams – the impact, the tremor in Louis’ voice, the low groan from Niall, the way everything tipped upside down until he blacked out – that turned his skin cold.  He absently scratches at his chest until he realizes someone slipped him into a hoodie – the faded material feels like home and he traces the outline of _Wolverhampton_ until he realizes, _oh_ – and his spine tightens at the way he knows Liam’s gone.

“Oi, you almost knocked over my orange juice, you tosser.”

It’s Louis and he knows it by tone, by sound, by clarity.  There’s familiar fingers brushing over his bare ankle, his feet kicked from beneath the blankets and he tries to scowl in the direction he thinks Louis is in but he can’t see him.

He can’t see anything, a callous reminder he doesn’t need with his head pounding and his skin frosty from the night sweats and his spine curved from the stiff bed he’s confined to.

“Leave him be, you twat,” Harry says to his right, in that spot once occupied by Liam with an arm immediately strewn around Zayn’s shoulders, tugging him closer like a _hello_ and _good morning_ and _I missed you while you wasted away in your misery_.

The aroma in the room is thick with sunlight and teenaged boys and McDonald’s and he sniffs Niall to his left, still stained in that body spray he hates – because Niall thinks Axe is acceptable and appropriate and a cheap substitute for cologne.  A soft grin pulls at the corners of his mouth when he catches a hint of Harry’s scent – always mandarins and citrus – and Louis’ thumb strokes the arch of his foot until he kicks away.

Fingers push into his hair, dragging the fringe off of his forehead and he reaches up to stroke the bones of a wrist just to be certain – _Liam_.

“You didn’t sleep well, did’ya?” Liam asks, the soft lull of his voice and the smile Zayn’s sure he’s trying to hide prevalent.

“Of course he didn’t, you dick,” Louis fusses and the edge of the bed dips under his solid weight, just near Zayn’s feet.  “You were probably suffocating him and this bed is horrid.  This whole place is fucking ridiculous with its shit cable and awful meals.”

There’s a rough snort, an echoing laughter that sounds like Niall with pieces of Harry and Zayn doesn’t know where to turn in this vacuum of noises, still unused to triggering his other sense to make up for his inability to see any of them.  He slouches against the mattress and fits his lip between his teeth while the others rattle on.

“Hey,” Liam whispers and it sounds like it’s coming from where Harry _should be_ but he can’t tell until sure fingers press into the nape of his neck, a strong jaw brushes over his cheek.  “Don’t struggle too much, yeah?  The doctors say it’ll make you disoriented and panicked.”

“I already am,” he mutters against his lip, closing his eyes under the weight of _too much, make it stop_ that keeps crawling at his skin.  He curls in on himself, drawing his knees up.

“You’re doing good, bro,” Niall tells him, greasy fingers sliding over Zayn’s forearm and he wishes he could see the gloss they leave behind.  He craves Niall’s crooked grin, the one he hides to the rest of the world because of the braces and the uncertainty but flashes so brilliantly at them like he’s completely comfortable with them.

Zayn tucks his chin and nods slowly until Harry laughs into his ear, whispering, “How could you not?  You’re Zayn fucking Malik.  You’re perfect at everything and that’s why we all hate you.”

“We all hate him because of his voice,” Louis declares, somewhere further up, out of Zayn’s reach.

“His fucked out smile when he’s not even trying,” Niall announces, a hollow thump filling Zayn’s ears probably from a fist against a puffed out chest.

“Because he’s so _GQ_ and gets all of the girls without trying,” Harry giggles and there’s rustling somewhere close by, Liam groaning just before he adds, “And quite a few of the lads too, right?”

There’s a blurt of strangled noises, he thinks from Liam but it’s so unfamiliar to his ears.  “It’s his cheekbones,” Liam attaches, his voice shyer than Zayn remembers.  “And his eyes and, probably, the way he’s a complete geek about comic books but how could you not love him?”

There’s a cloud of silence before Louis’ cackle explodes into this passageway of too loud machines and the rumble of the television and he can pick out everyone’s breathing without trying.

“Right, Leeymo, don’t hold back, yeah?  Just make a declaration in front of – “

Something thuds in the room and Niall’s wheezing laughter banks to his left, Harry’s tickling snicker to his right, and a groan from Louis like when Liam punches his shoulder too roughly after a bad joke.  It’s amusing – the way he settles and calms with them, his boys, cornering him until his heart is bruised with their fondness.

He ebbs himself into his own quiet while they talk.  The buzz of the telly constantly flipping channels – a flaw of Louis’ because he can never concentrate on just one program – and the constant blip of machines plays an orchestra to the harmony of their voices.  Someone feeds him an apple-flavored juice box – he thinks Harry by the definition of fingers holding his chin steady, a thumb wiping away the bits that slip out of his mouth – while another rips apart a bacon-less egg and cheese McMuffin to stuff into the corners of his mouth – he’s almost certain it’s Niall by the salty pad of a thumb, the bitten-down nails that scrape his lip on every other bite.

The calm fingers in his hair feel like Liam’s but they move like the rock of an unsteady ocean when Zayn tugs down the sleeves of the hoodie over his knuckles, tries to let the thick material swallow him.  They still against the crown of his head when a nurse talks of clearing the room for tests and examinations and he’s never felt so safe when four sets of protesting voices convince her otherwise.

Unfamiliar, cold fingers steady his chin, tilt his head unkindly with the heat of a flashlight tracing his corneas.  He can tell it’s an older doctor by the wrinkles on the pads of his fingers, the drag of his breathing, the scent of thick cologne like his grandfather wore.  There’s fingers wrapped around his wrist, squeezing impatiently until Harry can breathe at the sound of _‘no known nerve damage’_ and it’s Liam’s hand at the back of his neck, his thumb navigating across the ink of a silver fern on his skin.  He catches explanations of _blunt head trauma_ and the clarification between _temporary_ and _permanent_ that Louis begs for before foreign vernacular floods his ears and he misses the hitch in Liam’s breath or the pinch across his skin until Dr. Emerson – as he learns because Niall starts every question with _‘But Dr. Emerson, how will he’_ – clears his throat and talks slower with smaller words for _them_ , not Zayn –

Because Zayn’s fighting against tears again and he’s cuddling closer to Harry, unconsciously wishing he was –

He listens to them, Paul too, who sneaks in between a specialist who offers Zayn tips and other options _just in case_ his vision doesn’t return and the restless sighs that fill the room once all of the doctors finish explaining diagnoses and ‘ _you’re a lucky one, Mr. Malik, as we’ve seen worst scenarios._ ’  They discuss trading shifts to watch over him because, despite their refusal, they’re told they can’t stay another night according to policies and regulations and procedures none of them get.  Paul’s called his mum and there’s a pause in his voice when Zayn asked if she cried.  He flinches at the thought and lets Niall nuzzle into his neck until Zayn can smell the hint of kiwi in his shampoo.

Louis explains that Liam is on phone watch because ‘ _he’s the_ responsible one _and we all know it’_ and Zayn pushes back into Liam’s warm touch when the sting of tears is too much against his retinas.

He wriggles his fingers over the cotton on the bed, gnawing at his lip, waiting for this helpless feeling to drift but it stays afloat in the center of his chest.  He digs his toes into the blankets and he’s never been the weak one.  Not when he couldn’t dance or that time his throat was raw from smoking too many cigarettes but he still managed through his verses during the show or when everyone but Liam was uncertain of their future after they came in third because his baba taught him to brave a challenge.

But here, under the touch of acquainted but nervous hands and the blackness shrouding his eyes and the tremor of his heart, he can’t fight the way he’s sliding toward guilt.  Toward defeat.

“You lot can’t do this,” he says with a shaky voice after Niall’s bruises are checked and Louis’ bandages have been removed and Harry’s crawled away to answer a few tweets, curling his fingers into the sheets.  He bats his lashes until they come back wet, stuck together, and forces his head in the direction he feels the sunlight pouring in from.

He wonders if the sky is a pale grey like back in Bradford or the valley of blues like the countryside he remembers from some city in America.  He sniffs, scrubs the back of his hand over his cheeks to dry the moisture and fumbles with a grin.

“You can’t just stop the world ‘cause – “

“We _can_ ,” Louis demands, his hand curving around Zayn’s ankle for a deliberate squeeze.

He sounds so much like that boy back in Wellington with the lazy hair and bright, bright eyes and the determination of a leader even though he didn’t want to be one.  There’s a loss of hesitance, something Louis’ always lacked even when he was uncertain of his voice and too many critics said he was holding the group back.

Zayn shifts a little against the grainy blankets and the weight of stares he can _feel_ on him and the way he doesn’t know which way to push to escape this burn in his lungs.  He blinks rapidly, squeezing his eyes shut tightly to blur colors across them but his return is black and white and grey and he loses his shallow grip on resolve.

“You are our brother,” Louis hisses but everything shrouding his tone is kind, beckoning.  “You are the _soul_ of this group, Zayn Malik, and whether you know it or not is not my fault.  But we will make this work.  You will not crash and burn on us, you stupid little shit.”

There’s a rough agreement from Niall, a hum like a hymnal from Harry’s lips and he shakes at the sound of Liam’s breath a few paces from his ear.  He even picks out the even sigh from Paul’s lip, the one he doesn’t often let them hear like he approves of something they’ve done or like the pride in his chest is too much.

“I could fall in love with you, you know that?” Harry sings, the steeliness of his grin loud.

“Hey, what about me?” Niall whines from another corner of Zayn’s bed.

“You’re good for blowjobs, not marriage, Nialler, I told you that last week,” Harry laughs.

Paul’s protesting groan reaches the limits of his ears and he grins into the sleeve of that hoodie – definitely Liam’s because the scent is there, the size of it, the way it feels loose around his shoulders but like _home_ , like Liam’s clothes always do – because this feels like _his_ band of idiots.  This feels like he can breathe again.

This feels like he’ll survive – not by choice, but because they’ll make him do it.

 

/*/

 

Later, much later, after they’ve each escaped the hospital for a shower and a bite of something decent to eat through the emergency stairwell because of the dozens and dozens of paps hiding away in the lobby and across the street, Niall feeds him ice cubes for the dehydration from the meds while Harry makes plans for a group holiday – something they haven’t done since In-N-Out burgers,  California sunsets, and singing _and it hurts with every heart beat_ at the top of their lungs – with Paul humming his approval from a corner of the room.  Louis’ taken to flipping through reruns of _Family Guy_ and Liam’s too quiet in the funnel of _noise, noise, noise_ that keeps leaving Zayn a little on edge and a lot on exhaustion.  He can feel the fingertips of the sun dragging down his shoulder, across his bare forearm to that new intravenous line the nurse put in while they were all gone, and he knows it’s early evening just by the hum of the machines and the laughter of that one nurse in the hall who’s shift starts after five.

He passes Niall all of his grape jelly cups – and wishes he could see that bright, ocean-wide grin Niall offers him afterwards – and picks at his ID bracelet while Harry lists off all of his dream cities over the buzz of Stewie Griffin in the foreground.  He sniffs at the three cups of Starbucks tea – Earl Grey, like Harry and Louis love – and refuses to drink his own when Louis shoves it at him, picking at the torn flesh of his lip with his teeth while they all talk about tour changes and delayed studio bookings and he doesn’t feel the least bit useless.

Except he _does_ , in the worst kind of way.

He rests on the cove of silence bracketing him, balancing his chin on his drawn up knees while fingers pluck at the scratchy duvet loosely wrapped around him.  There’s a few spots behind his lids now, just sparks and tiny explosions of ivory that dampen against the shadows.  Nothing in color, nothing definite, nothing appeasing.  He thinks in Rorschach imagery and tries to make sense of the blurred shapes, the smooth edges of light, the random blots of something unfamiliar and it’s distracting to the drag of his breath or the way his fingers keep twitching because it’s been a whole day without a cigarette.  His skin feels ashen, muscles weak, shoulders heavy.

His fingers toy with the fringe of product free hair and he wonders just how much of a mess he probably looks.  There’s no wax in his hair and his stubble feels much thicker and he’s certain his skin is pale, offering a sharp contrast between complexion and the stark ink of his tattoos.

Harry’s hung up around his side, sprawled against him with their hips wedged together and one of his hands lost in Zayn’s hair.  He forces out a smile at the scent of Harry’s citrus blend from too much fruit, not enough cologne, until Harry says in a careful voice, “Do you want to try and walk around again?”

He blinks against nothing, just unwavering dark, before jamming his fingers into Harry’s rib like a _‘no, don’t make me.’_

They tried earlier, all of them blanketed around him to make sure he didn’t fall or slip or forget that he was blind.  There were roaming hands across his hips, steadying his arms when he tried to feel around for something to latch onto and Niall’s sharp breathing every time he took an unsteady step.  Delayed motion sickness and an hour of vomiting up water and bile and sudden fear kept him bedridden with his fingers curled into the sheets and their stares rather than their words haunting him.

He sighs softly, nudging his temple to Harry’s curls before asking, “Who’s on first tonight?”

Niall clears his throat, Louis gasping on an inhale, and Zayn knows, by defining silence, that it’s Harry’s turn.  He laughs to himself because, usually, Louis always draws the short straw in times like this – the first to investigate a noise in the dark or ask a girl out for one of the other boys or test the strength of a lake sheeted by ice in the dead of winter to see if it could carry all of their weight.

“I could,” Liam says in a voice that’s not familiar and a bit scared, but it’s silenced by Louis’ choked protest.

“Harry’s got it,” Louis argues, certain, even from too far away for Zayn to trace at ink he doesn’t think he can find absently like he once could before.

He doesn’t miss the pitch in Liam’s grumble but misses the words that follow because he’s too distracted by Harry’s lovely fingers against his scalp and his peppermint sweet breath along his cheek as he goes on about their new hotel – a suite in some fancy microscopic place closer to the hospital – and he loses himself in Niall’s laughter at some argument between Peter and Lois on the telly.

It’s closer to seven, at least Harry tells him so, when Louis escapes to the halls for a phone call from Eleanor while Harry drags Niall from the room with a smirk in his voice and a promise of KFC that Niall will never refuse.  Paul signals his exit with a loud cough and even louder chatter with their new security detail about visitation and schedules and it takes Zayn a few heartbeats to register the silence and this sudden impacting loneliness crawling up his skin.

He turns on the unbendable mattress until he’s lying on his side, testing the heat of the hallway lighting against his face while his fingers scratch over the sheets.  The bed shifts with a recognizable weight and Zayn curves his smile into the fluff of his pillow at the scent of vanilla and the sticky caramel Liam loves drizzled into his cinnamon dolce lattes.

Thick fingers search across the sheets until they twist around Zayn’s.  His spine arches on instinct, he tells himself, and he pushes into Liam’s chest with their legs tangling over the sheets.  He hopes he’s not imagining that smile pressed to the nape of his neck or the soft swirl of Liam’s breathing like the lapping sea over the sand.  He doesn’t want it to be intravenous analgesic for the headaches or the disillusion from a lack of vision or the _hallucinations_ he’s read about from a nicotine addiction he can’t quite scratch.

And, secretly, he prays Liam’s spare fingers really are drawing out a map of stars across his hip just to soothe the nerves or Zayn’s shaking.

“You’re real quiet, man,” Zayn tells him, blinking against the blurts of silver across encompassing black.

Liam chuckles, the draft from his breath lifting the hairs on the back of Zayn’s neck.  His fingers chase after goosebumps and Zayn bites hard into his lip to stop a whimper when Liam finds new territory on his lower abdomen to explore.

“You too, mate,” Liam whispers, dragging his nose over Zayn’s wrecked hair.  “You too.”

“I’m blind,” Zayn huffs out, the words sharp on his tongue.  He freezes beneath Liam’s still fingers and he knows he shouldn’t have.  He should’ve swallowed the words and bit down on resolution but, fuck, he can’t do that with Liam.

He can lie to everyone else about being okay and prepared and willing but not with Liam.

He just _can’t_ with Liam.

Liam laughs low, the shiver vibrating from his skin and into Zayn like a wave smacking against rocks.  It relaxes Zayn’s muscles until he’s malleable against Liam again.

“You’re not mute, though,” Liam points out because he’s such a sucker for the obvious.

Zayn catches a tender spot of his lip with the corner of his teeth, feels Liam’s fingers coil tighter around his own.  He feels stupid because he wants to turn his head just to look at Liam even though he can’t see anything but the endless inky resolution like permanent midnight.

“I could say the same about,” Zayn pauses when Liam’s lips pucker to the bone at the bottom of his neck where a tattoo is stained and he forgets half of his words when spun around that kind of reverie.

Liam’s fingers, calloused but still completely soft, brush over his knuckles in time to the bleeping monitors before he says, softer now, “Doniya rung me up earlier, when I was at the hotel.”

Zayn swallows, throat still dry from this sterile air.  He tucks his chin, squeezes back to say _go on_ even when his mouth can’t and his eyes shut on Liam’s next wavering breath.

“She says your mum is okay, a lot worried but she’s brave, you know that, right?  Like, out of all of our mums, yours worries the least.  She just knows you – like, she’s confident,” Liam explains, striking a thumbnail over the inked bird before adding, “And she didn’t cry, Doniya, I mean.  She was tough like she’s always been, man.  She’s a fucking rock, mate.  She just – she says she hopes you recover so you won’t have to stop drawing.  I couldn’t stop laughing.  I couldn’t stop talking about how pissed you’ll be if you can’t see yourself in a mirror or be able to sketch out those silly drawings of me as Superman.”

Zayn fumbles with a laugh, the sound shy and nothing like he remembers it years ago.  He turns just a little, forcing open his eyes even when it’s the same opened or closed.  It’s the rough etch of shadows and blots of grey but he wants to imagine Liam’s smile in there somewhere, not as grainy and black and white like it is in his head.  He wants to trace the pink of his lips, the fullness of the bottom one, the way his cheeks slide into indented dimples whenever Zayn makes him laugh.

He’s so certain that he’s arbitrarily pushing down against this new feeling that’s spreading over his chest like he and Liam, Liam and him –

No, he and Liam are not _like that_.

At least, he can’t tell because he isn’t able to read it in Liam’s eyes or the twitch of his smile or the way their hands look together because there’s nothing but dark, dark blurs across his eyes.

He half-turns a little more until Liam’s smile is wedged against his shoulder and the softest points of Liam’s buzz cut stroke the highest planes of Zayn’s cheek.  He wants to look upon the roundness of a pair of brown eyes, the way they’re probably shaded by thick eyelashes but settles for the warm palm that meets his hipbone in the overtones of their shallow breathing.

“I couldn’t say this when the others were around, yeah, but like,” Zayn swallows, the lump so thick and suffocating now.  His fingers pinch into the sheets instead of the bits of Liam’s skin he can’t view.  “Like, I’m scared, mate.  What if it doesn’t come back, yeah?  I mean, I know it’s stupid and I’m in the band for my voice and my looks and – “

Liam makes a half-desperate noise, a cluck of his tongue against his teeth until Zayn shrinks a little, frowning.

“What if I’m stuck like this?  I’ll be no good, to anyone of you,” Zayn sighs, fingers twisting in unwanted material because he wants his bed back home, the one that’s washed with Liam’s scent for the two weeks Liam refused to leave and Zayn refused to kick him out.  The way his pillows smell like Liam’s shampoo and his favorite shirts wear Liam’s cologne and his sheets are stained with a Wolverhampton aroma rather than Bradford.

Liam’s breath washes against the shell of his ear, calm and daydream-like.  His smile presses to Zayn’s lobe, where the hoop earring is.

“I remember a bad boy, a Bradford bad boy – “

Zayn groans but his laugh reaches an octave higher.  “ _Leeyum_ , I haven’t called myself that since – “

Liam hums him quiet, fingers curving around the bone of his hip.  “Back at boot camp and after we first met at McDonald’s.  I remember that boy so well.  He was afraid that he wasn’t good enough.  And what if this was it.  He made it through auditions but that was all.”

There’s a lift in Liam’s smile, Zayn can sense it.  It ticks heavy blush across his cheeks, down his neck, spread hot and uneven across his chest.  He turns his head at the way Liam snorts, trying to hide away even though he doesn’t know if Liam is inclining to his left or right because this boy is surrounding him with this uncontainable warmth.

“You survived that and you survived Louis’ obnoxious yelling and you made it through the first tour and, when that girl broke your heart, you survived,” Liam declares, fingers squeezing tiny anecdotes into Zayn’s skin, shying beneath the hospital gown.  “You made it past everyone wondering about your religion and calling you names and Harry’s snoring.  You overcame all of Niall’s late-night cravings for Nando’s and that one night, started by Louis, where we all got pissed on cheap alcohol and ran around the streets stark naked, mind you.”

Liam presses a little closer, his chest fitting between that space separating Zayn’s shoulder blades.  His round nose brushes against shaded ink and Zayn can’t help the way he pushes back just for the constant contact.

“And you’ll make it through this,” Liam promises a little softer, their breathing precise and in unison.  “Just give it time, Zayner.  All of your mates are here with you, whether you can see or not, man.”

He can’t help the way his lips go slack for half a second of some ridiculous poetic meter before they twitch up into a smile.  His fingers loosen against the fabric of the sheets, even on the ease of Liam’s lips into the nape of his hair.  He smirks when sock-covered feet brush against his bare feet – _manners, Liam, so polite_ – and sinks into unintended pipedream at the way Liam rocks into their silence.

His words get caught on a lung or a heavy tongue or on this itch of something new yet so familiar before he tilts his head to the side enough for his grin to be visible.  He scratches at the blanket, teeth craving a bottom lip but resistance plays the lead role as he says, “You know, you’re like my best mate.  Out of all of them and sorta like Ant and Danny are but different.”

“Different,” Liam repeats, a grade lower than Zayn’s own voice.

Zayn nods at nothing, blinking until the dark spots don’t seem as dense.  He pushes into his pillow and pretends he isn’t so aware of the touch of Liam’s hand over the small of his back.

“But you are, man.  Like my best mate.  I probably don’t say it ‘cause, you know, I’m an idiot – “

Liam wheezes out a laugh that isn’t condescending or the least bit teasing.

“You’re not an idiot,” Liam tells him, words still rushed against his laughter, “you donut.”

Zayn nudges back, his aim off until it feels a slate of ribs and, suddenly, he’s satiated with the groan that follows.

“’m not.  It’s just, like, sort of hard to explain,” Zayn mumbles, teeth finally catching the edge of a dry bottom lip.  They grip gently, the wound from yesterday still raw and sore.

Liam’s nose nudges his shoulder.  “Not getting soppy on me, are you mate?”

Zayn chases a snicker with a smile, shaking his head.  “Shut it, you idiot.”

“Oh, harsh words Malik,” Liam says with the kind of upturned, crooked grin Zayn remembers from earlier days in a tour bus with a world of noise but a quiet kind of disruption created by shared smiles.

Fingers ghost up his sides until he’s uncontrollable laughter and shaking limbs and jerky movements to get away.  It doesn’t last – the need to flee – before he settles into Liam again, stretching with his cackles.  He barely notices the fingers surging down his arm until they fit into the spaces between his own.  On instinct, his do the same, curling around each other across unseen sheets and a firm mattress.

There’s a press of sugar pink lips to the inside of his neck and stubble itching his tendons and Liam feels so bright around him.  He feels like a mate, like a burst of light in this wily darkness, a stretch of ocean across uncharted shores.  Zayn inhales quickly and Liam moves with him until he feels like a –

_He and Liam are not like that_.

Still, his mind wraps around faded images of strong fingers and eyes the coarse shade of shaved cinnamon and a round, soft nose, a quiet mixture of an almost five o’clock shadow and boyish buzz cut.  But it’s not like that.  Not by pure definition, at least.

He’s distracted by the squeak of a fresh heel against the tiles of the floor and the syncopated breathing that follows is one he remembers loud in his ear while doing something stupid and probably illegal.  The corner of his mouth twitches upward while he tilts his chin up just enough for the hallway light to wash over his cheek.  He sniffs at sharp cologne, his senses so aware and in-tune, before his grin spreads like wildfire.

“You can come in, Lou,” Zayn says halfway through a laugh.

The sigh that crosses Louis’ lips is one he’s heard a dozen times – plots to take over the X-Factor house, pranks planned in the dark, following that longing look he used to give Harry – and it inches Zayn’s smile a little higher until he’s restless for the smirk on pinkish lips, wide blue eyes that make him feel alive.  He wafts against the frown because, no, he won’t see Louis like that – not now, at least – until the bed dips on the other side and Louis’ crowded around them with orangey bubblegum breath and fidgety fingers.

“How’d you know?” Louis asks, a little breathless from the shock but there’s a loud strumming grin behind the words.

Zayn smirks back, twisting a little until Louis fits somewhere in their glacier.

“Ever heard of those people who lose one of their senses and the others ones become, like, stronger?” Zayn wonders, shutting his eyes again because not seeing that dazed look probably morphing Louis’ expression or the bold stripes most likely lining his shirt is too, too painful right now.

He breathes in the crisp, sterile air instead – longs for his mum’s cooking and the warm spices and wood chips from the garden back in Bradford.

“Yeah, they’re called _the X-Men_ , you nob,” Louis teases, fingers tangling into Zayn’s mused hair and he doesn’t mind for half a second.  Not if Louis is this close and Liam’s laugh is breathy against his neck.

Zayn snorts and feels the rustling behind him and the stretch of Liam’s arm when he gives Louis a shove.

“You’re a right idiot,” Liam says mockingly, his giggle interplaying through his words.

“And _fuck you_ very much, you twat, I am being observant,” Louis insists with exactly no malice.  There’s a twitch to his grin, Zayn can almost feel it, before he adds, “Oi, we probably look like a right sight to anyone who passes.  Three lads in bed together.”

“Not the first time,” Liam mumbles, half into the crook of Zayn’s neck and his spine coils for that touch.

He doesn’t know why but he refuses to fight it.  The buzz wakes and shivers across his skin and he’s lost on the lucidity forming behind Liam’s calloused fingers.

“I didn’t want to interrupt you two and this thing that you – “

Liam stiffens behind him and a small, aborted noise echoes in the shell of his ear before Louis goes quiet.  There’s almost a taunt in his laugh that Zayn picks up on but his senses aren’t that acute yet and he drags dull nails up the hair on Liam’s forearm instead.

“Poor, poor Liam,” Louis says like an afterthought, the muscles that were tense around Zayn loosening when their silence grows thicker.

Zayn nips at his lip, his tongue wetting the surface before he inhales all of the scents surrounding him.  He blinks his eyes open to ecliptic stars and emptiness, his frown balanced with the small jut of a smile when Louis’ fingers press into his scalp.  _Safety_ , he thinks, curved into them until all of his limbs scream _home, these boys, always_.

He lets the drugs meant to dull the headaches, not the desolation engraved into his heart right now, crash into his system and his yawn is muted by the quiet conversation Louis and Liam start up about song ideas and another trip to the nearest Starbucks.  He feels Liam’s fingers, still loosely twined with his, grip a little tighter when his eyes bat shut and he bites the edge of his tongue for the _‘stay, Liam, please’_ that waits there.  There’s not enough distractions from the darkness and the shadows and the world he can no longer view but sleep tightens an unhealthy grip around him.  He drifts off somewhere between a garbled laugh from Louis and the wheezing sound of Liam’s snickers – _‘he’s right adorable when he’s sleepy, this chap’_ – cocooning around him.

 

/*/

 

It’s Louis who gets him outside and to his first real cigarette in four days.  The air is alive with a quiet chill, a sweet autumn day where the sun sits halfway in the sky because it’s early afternoon.  He wonders if the sky is a slate grey, maybe a correlation of blues and unexpected sea-foam greens like California midday but they’re not in Los Angeles.  It’s Paul who tells him they’re lost somewhere in Indiana, between tour stops, and it’s like a graveyard – this city, the people, the way he almost feels anonymous except for the few dozen paps he’s been told are scouting the hospital and the press across the street and the reports keep flooding in but no one will tell him what they say.

_Overprotective_ , he thinks but that’s how they’ve always been about each other.  When someone attacks Niall’s crooked smile or Liam’s round nose or Harry’s missed notes during a show or Louis’, well Louis’ _everything_.  A brotherhood, a band of completely loyal lads, an almost-fraternity that Zayn unknowingly pledged himself to back in a small bungalow around a bonfire with a cloud of blankets and a portrait of stupid smiles abound.

Louis snuck him through the halls, up the lift, to the roof where gravel crunched beneath their trainers and Zayn snuggled into a familiar jumper – Wolverhampton, Liam, a place he never thought of home before this but now – against the breath of October air.  The traffic buzzes below them and Louis leans him up against cold brick with a cardboard cup of Starbucks coffee – black, no sugar, a touch of hazelnut cream for effect – in one hand.

He tries to do all of it by himself – drinking the coffee but his aim is off and half of the scalding liquid dribbles down his chin and he doesn’t even bother to try lighting the fag – until Louis is a flood of laughter and playful shoves.

“Zayn Malik, a masterpiece to the masses and a complete fool for me,” Louis jokes, plucking the cigarette from between Zayn’s tightened lips and aiding him in drinking down the other half of his coffee.

They fumble through the proper way of doing this – Louis huffing the first few puffs to blow smoke in Zayn’s face like a shotgun of weed with an aching cackle – before Louis merely holds the fag to Zayn’s lips and lets him take a few long hauls, the smoke clouding around them.  It’s sharp and rough against Zayn’s lungs but it bursts through his senses like neon fireworks, tipping his head back like a professional to blow rings of bluish-grey clouds that he can’t watch evaporate into the dense air.  He merely curls his fingers around his cup and shuts his eyes against the heat of the sun.

“How bad do I look?” Zayn teases, smirking at the effervescent sound of Louis’ snort.

Louis pinches his hip and pulls in close, helping Zayn sling an arm around smaller shoulders.

“You vain fuck, I swear,” Louis wheezes, inhaling a quiet drag of smoke.  “You look fit, man.  The whole fucked up quiff and stubble and cheekbones things works for you.  Very art deco, I’d say.”

Zayn snorts, shaking his head.  He can’t hold back a pleased sound when Louis presses the filter back to his lips, sucking in the flame, trying to cover up a smoker’s cough with an abandoned snicker.

“Do you even know what that means?” Zayn inquires, turning his head a little.

He’s curious how the sun reflects streamline ocean hues over those true blue eyes.  He wonders how long Louis’ hair has gotten and if it’s gelled back or loose like Niall wears his.  He misses the curve of his smile, the way it reminds him so much of Jack Nicholson and the Joker and comic book villains he can’t name right now – _menacingly sweet_ , he thinks.

“Fuck no,” Louis laughs out through his own cough because Louis doesn’t usually smoke.  Only in those moments when he’s completely fucked out and stressed and can’t find a Harry Styles to cling to.

Zayn muses over how much weight these wide but small shoulders can carry, even if Louis’ always done it secretly for them.

“Paul says, after they release you, we’ll be heading out again.  Just a few more appearances, maybe an interview or two because the world’s wondering about us,” Louis explains in that half-serious, half-annoyed voice he always gets when it’s time to talk business.

Zayn nods, lets Louis help him through two more sips of coffee.  Louis’ knuckles brush gently over his thickening stubble – Harry’s offered to shave him but Liam argued otherwise from afar and Zayn can still taste the grin on his lips at the sound of the early-morning, rough gravel of Liam’s voice in his ears.  He exhales waves of smoke, teeth catching on his lip when the breeze spikes down on them.

“How do I,” Zayn pauses, looking away and hoping to catch a piece of the sky in the horizon of dark, dark spots.  His shoulders sink at the shadows that follow every blink.

Louis clears his throat, nudging his hip to Zayn’s.  “We’ll figure it out, man.  You know management – “

“Fuck management,” Zayn huffs like that mantra he and Louis created a year ago amidst concert after concert with no breaks and missing Waliyha grow a foot taller since the last time he’d seen her.

Louis coughs out a snicker, wrapping cool fingers around Zayn’s wrist.  “Fuck management,” he repeats and Zayn grins at the smile he can pick up in Louis’ tone.

They’re breathing through their quiet, over the sound of birds and rushing cars and the symphony of leaves rustling over the roof.  He wants to paint a mural of the ever-changing colors like gold, scarlet, burnt orange, tea-colored strokes because he fucking loves autumn and he’s missing half of it behind a fog of black.

The air smells wet from last night’s storm, the one he would’ve slept through if it wasn’t for Harry’s snores in one corner of the room and the absence of a warm body pressed against him in that cold, cold bed.  He wrinkles his nose at the stench of Louis’ cologne but grins through that raspberry shampoo Louis’ probably stole from Harry and the fresh linen aroma of the shirt Louis’ wearing – most likely Liam’s because it’s the only detergent Liam uses.  He traces the outline of broken skin and the tight knot of stitches Louis has until he can get close enough to normal to forget everything else.

“Coldplay,” Louis says with a grin Zayn can’t look upon but he touches it with free fingers.

Zayn mixes a laugh with a cough from the smoke, nodding.  “Sick tunes, man.  Remember Harry’s obsession with ‘Fix You’ and cherry lollies for, like, a year.”

Louis shakes with a giggle.  “And Liam made us listen to ‘the Scientist’ until we knew all of the words.”

“Nialler still wants us all to band together for one of their shows, right?” Zayn asks, his lips crooking sideways into a grin.

“And get tattoos of the date on our shoulders even though that prick won’t go near a needle,” Louis chokes out with his cackle, leaning into Zayn.

Zayn soaks in another breath of nicotine, his organs wrapped in delight at the way Louis trades puffs with sips and it _almost_ feels like a place he’s been before.

An almost that comes attached with an inability to see the fucking day-bright grin on Louis’ lips and the way their hands fit together.

Their conversations are drenched in everything but what the doctors say and the _‘they say it’s temporary, right, so you’ll see again soon bro’_ Harry whispered after the intern changed his medication and the harbored silence that spread through the room when Zayn listened to his mum whimper through a quick phone call.  They’re lazy with their second cigarette – because Zayn’s desperate and Louis is accommodating in the most beautiful way – and Zayn’s coffee turns cold when they start in on their favorite bits from _the Amazing Spider-Man_.

“I’m glad it was you,” Louis says between a cloud of smoke Zayn can smell and a kick of the wind.  He feels Louis’ fingers twitch against his hip for the _‘next to me and with Niall and all three of us’_ he can’t seem to force out.  “You were so calm, even when Niall was freaking out and, Zayner I wish – “

Zayn’s mouth quirks and he tightens his arm around Louis’ shoulders just as his lips meet the filter.  He puffs quietly, medicating his will and chasing the smoke with a short laugh.

“I couldn’t see anything but I just knew you two needed me, bro,” Zayn coughs out, licking at lips that are pleading with a frown.  He turns his head away, to the breeze, to the sun that washes over his skin like a warm hand wiping away tears.

“You can say it.  You can say it, man, and I won’t tell you to sod off or to get a fucking life,” Louis promises, his throat tight even though Zayn’s not sure if it’s from the smoke or the constant press on both of their lungs from the guilt.

Zayn swallows, pressing into the bricks and tilting his head.  “Couldn’t do this without my mates, Lou.  Not without you lot.”

Louis fingers squeeze at bone, a chin pressed into Zayn’s collar against the fluff of the jumper and the endless cold slicking his skin.

“I’m freaked, man,” he admits quietly, blinking at his oblivion, biting his lip to distract his mind.  “’m just glad me friends are with me.  It’s kind of manic, innit?  Like – I’m just glad I’ve got you, Lou.”

There’s a smirk in the hollow beneath his jaw, a gentle itch against his skin from the unshaven cheek Louis pushes there.  He can feel the length of Louis’ hair and the slow rhythm of his breathing and it hums like the opening of a musical in his organs.  He tangles his own fingers in the thick of Louis’ hair, the gel sticky and unwavering, and strokes at Louis’ scalp until Louis can speak again.

“I thought you were dead,” Louis chokes out, still grinning into Zayn’s neck, “And all I could think is _‘who the fuck is going to take care of us when Liam isn’t strong enough to survive without this twat?’_ I sorted that’s pretty fucked up.”

Zayn snorts and turns until the edge of his jaw drags over Louis’ forehead.

“No,” he mumbles into Louis’ hair, shutting his eyes to dim the spark of charcoal.  “It’s just you, Lou.”

“Partners in crime,” Louis buzzes, swaying in the wind until Zayn rocks gently with him.

“Partners in crime,” Zayn repeats, a little lower but with as much affection as he can pull together.

 

/*/

 

The night Niall is on watch, they all stay in at the hospital except for Harry who ventures out to see the city under a tangerine sunset – Liam promises, into the shell of his ear, that it’s a breathtaking sight but Zayn loses focus when Liam’s fingers find the space between his like thunder in the clouds.

Niall’s too giddy and senseless to take offense to the way none of them actually trust him enough to watch over Zayn solo but Zayn feels it in his bones, the way Niall is cagey and restless and anxious whenever he’s alone now.  He sits closer to Zayn and talks about Harry more and refuses to go anywhere alone and it’s a tell that the crash has left him a bit more broken than what they thought.  Suddenly, the self-proclaimed ‘ _claustrophobic_ ’ is more comfortable in small spaces rather than the expanse of the world but none of them complain.

He thinks Harry’s need for fresh air and the streets of this quiet city are just a diversion for the press because management hasn’t released an official statement.  It draws enough attention that Louis doesn’t have to sneak out for cheap snacks and Paul doesn’t seem as disgruntled when Liam begs for a trip back to the hotel for his favorite joggers and Zayn’s favorite pillow from the bus.  Harry’s tactile in a way none of them ever were but the world will never get how this boy with Emerald City greens for eyes and a cheeky grin and curls that are never settled is a fucking _genius_ , even if he tries hard not to be.

They beg the interns, the two that actually _know their music_ and are really nice to Zayn because of it, for three different types of pizza and flavored frozen lemonades from the ice cream shop down the road.  Niall cuts on _the Green Hornet_ to appease his new fond addiction to Seth Rogen films while they gather around Zayn’s bed and fort him in with spread limbs, idle hands.

He feigns against exhaustion from listening to doctors all day, travelling _three_ times to the x-ray floor for various scans, and the constant ‘ _nothing permanent and no known damage can be found’_ that hounds his dreams because, fuck, this won’t pass.  His best impression of normalcy involves him not curling in on his bones and smiling though manic conversations that start and end randomly around him.

“ _So_ ,” Niall exaggerates with sugar in his smile and pizza grease-stained fingers circling Zayn’s bare ankle.  He sounds like he always does when he’s completely pissed or caught on an adrenaline high after a show or when he’s falling in love – and that’s only happened once, by definition.

“If this is the start of a game of truth or dare, we are not sixteen anymore Horan, fuck off,” Louis whines.

The corners of Zayn’s mouth lift, feet shuffling over the sheets and loose sweat pants around his legs.  He thinks they might be Liam’s, definitely not Harry’s, but he’s not really sure.  The four of them have spent days tending to him like an amputee – walking him to the bathroom and helping him find the toilet, brushing his teeth, dressing and undressing him, feeding him like an infant.  He hates it like the shiver in your bones when it’s too cold outside.

Still, they’re his brothers.  This is what they do when one’s sick or hurt or completely lost on where they fit into this life.

_It’s what they do_.

“Well, mate, I did have an outstanding dare for our precious Leeymo to ease some of the sexual tension since he probably hasn’t wanked in a week over – “

Zayn feels it the moment one of his pillows is stolen from his side and the thump of downy softness smacking a head.

“Careful Nialler,” Louis snorts, fingers muffling the sound, “our dear daddy is quite sensitive about that subject nowadays.”

“Shut it,” Liam hisses, kicking aimlessly and jostling Zayn from his position in the bed.

He wrinkles his nose, fits his fingers into the sheets and wishes Niall was close enough to kick for interrupting the soft tug of Liam’s fingers through the thick hair at the nape of his neck.  It was oddly comforting, thrilling even if he’s not sure why.  Or how.  Or _when_ did he start to need Liam’s touch to calm the ghostly chill across his heart.

There’s nowhere for him to hide the flush of his cheeks or the twitch across his lips but he turns his head anyway, ignoring the banter between Louis and Niall.

Niall is rolling laughter and bouncy movements over the too small bed, the saccharine scent of strawberry lemonade mixing with extra pepperoni and vegetarian and chicken pizza.  Zayn pulls his knees to his chest, balancing his chin on them while pressing into the headboard and the absence of Liam’s fingers.

“We don’t have to get back on the road, y’know,” Niall says absently, snuffling closer and Zayn can smell the Axe and the grease and the minty conditioner Niall uses.  He reeks of fresh peroxide like the boxed dye Lou uses to experiment with shades of blonde, platinum, silvery-flaxen.

Zayn smirks at the thought of the four of them crowded around a large basin, washing out cheap drugstore coloring and the shock on Niall’s lips when his hair turned electric blue rather than soft-worn sunglow the box promised.  It feels like decades ago, five mindless mates stumbling into success without the endless road others have travelled.

“Yeah,” Louis hums and those are his small fingers across the bones in Zayn’s foot, his cold toes poking Zayn’s side haphazardly like he’s arranged crookedly across the bed.  “We could fuck off for a few months, make a few records, break a few hearts, get high.  Sounds magical.”

“Just be normal lads until,” Niall pauses like the words are too big for his teeth and the braces and his strawberry tongue.  The hesitance buzzes and Zayn blinks his eyes to ease the frown.  “Until you see again.”

Zayn nods distractedly, picking at the worn material of his – no, definitely _Liam’s_ – joggers.  His teeth gnaw cautiously over his lip, the one he split in the middle of the night because his dreams feel so toxic and strangling and _‘we almost_ died _and I haven’t told you how much I love you lot’_ are the words Niall keeps repeating when everything is too quiet between them.

He sucks in a quick breath and thick fingers meet the juncture between neck and tense shoulder blades, outlining a spread tail inked over his skin.

“And if I don’t,” Zayn mutters, his chin still pressed to his knees.  “S’okay, lads.  We can do this.”

“We can,” Louis agrees but there’s an absence of strength in his voice.

“We will,” Niall insists, stroking a greasy thumb over Zayn’s ankle.

Zayn presses into a smile and his bones go soft when Liam nudges his side, tricks him into a grin while calculated fingers etch out _‘brave’_ across the nape of his neck.

“Besides, now that you’re handicapped, it’ll be nice to be the _hot one_ in the group,” Niall declares, that riptide of a laugh washing through the room louder than the film and the machines and Zayn’s _almost_ steady breathing.

“You’ll never be the hot one,” Liam chuckles, fingers drawing the fringe from Zayn’s forehead.

“S’true Nialler,” Louis confirms, the crooked ease of a smile so definite in his tone.  “Even blind, Zayn will always hold that title.  You’re the cute one.”

“Fuck all of you, ‘m _not_ the cute one,” Niall argues.  “That _was_ Liam, it _is_ Harry, but not me.  I get all the birds.”

Louis sighs happily and Liam curves his chuckle into the round of Zayn’s shoulder, tickling fingers over Zayn’s neck while helping him to sip on his lemonade.

“You get the leftovers, babe,” Louis says gently like he’s telling Niall they didn’t win a Brit or there’s no more chocolate chip cookies left.

“But I have the most Twitter followers – “

“That’s Harry,” Liam corrects, grinning into the crook of Zayn’s neck as he reaches across for a slice of pizza.

“I get the most blowjobs on the road – “

“Uh, I believe that was me, before El, of course,” Louis points out with a spare inch of pride resting on his tongue.

“Think that one was Harry too,” Liam suggests and Zayn can’t fight with his laughter.

“I definitely get the most compliments out of you douchebag pricks,” Niall barks but it still sounds so weak, so comical coming from him.

“Zayn,” Louis and Liam say together and their laughter moves in unison as well, shaking the bed and leaving a sticky smirk sewn to Zayn’s lips, cheeks afire with something probably grossly pink.

“Have I told you all how much I hate you?” Niall huffs, pressing his spine onto Zayn’s shins, warming Zayn’s feet with his body and tipping his fluffy hair back onto Zayn’s knees.

“Not in the past month,” Louis hums and the weight of the bed shifts like he’s trying to crawl closer to Niall.  “You’ve got loads of making up to do.”

Their pleased giggles, like two teens high on cheap weed and Mountain Dew, echo through the room and Zayn tilts his gravity toward Liam’s orbit to feel the tremor of his body when he joins them.  He doesn’t need to see the crinkled eyes, the laughter lines around his mouth, the way his nose scrunches, the shift of his birthmark when he laughs.

But for a second, he misses the way Liam’s eyes turn obscenely gold like embers from a bonfire during a sunrise and wants to know if that smile over daydream pink lips is for him and not the rest of the world.

 

/*/

 

He doesn’t sleep that night.  Not without the drugs and even with Niall curled around his feet like a cat at the end of the bed.  Not with Liam’s scent stained to his pillow – creamy vanilla and rustic firewood – or Louis’ ratty beanie clenched between his fingers.  His eyes remain open, dense charcoal and roughly sketched shades of black across his eyelids until he can’t bare it.

The sweat that cools uncomfortably against his skin is just a reminder – _he survived_.  The driver didn’t, Louis did, Niall barely.  But he survived.

His free fingers drag over sterile sheets and he doesn’t have his phone to ring up his mum, to fumble through his directory for any voice to square his thoughts into a corner of his mind.  He has the chill of a foreign room that feels more and more like his eternity and the loud machines and the emptiness behind his lids.

There’s a dryness in his throat and the itchy comforter against his bare feet and he feels short of breath.  It’s displaced, like everything else, and he remembers poetry as a kid.  He remembers _symbolism_ and the different interpretations of death and the _what’s the meaning of life_ Louis asked him in the dark of the bungalow one night when they were buzzed on root beer and the resistance to conformity.

It loosens his tenacity until he feels like he did those first few days in the group – mystic, exotic, different from the others.  A fucking display for everyone to pick apart because his skin had a sharper hue and his hair was dark and his religion was such a focus.  And now he’s blind, temporary or not, and it’s just fuel for the fire.  Just another reason why Zayn Malik doesn’t fit amongst the glitter and spark.

He chokes on his inhale and, for a second, he lets the sting across his eyes rip the seams.  He bats his lashes against the wetness and carefully curls around himself, trying not to knock Niall from his sleep.  He presses his face into the pillow, pulling away from the dampness and the way his heart pounds.

Mandarins.  Mandarins and citrus and kiwi clench him before stumbling feet over quiet tiles pound closer.  He huffs into a wet smile, drags the back of his hand over his eyes and Harry smells like teenage boy and pineapple rum and some girl’s flowery perfume when he flops into the bed.  His curls spill over Zayn’s shoulder and his long, long arms curl around Zayn, hauling him backwards.

A cold nose presses behind his ear, a spread smile into his hair.  The alcohol – too sweet, too _Harry_ -like – sweeps into his senses, makes him dizzy for a moment.  He squeezes Harry’s hand, the one splayed over his belly, and he breathes like it hurts.

“S’okay, Zaynie,” Harry mumbles with an almost unnoticeable slur.  “Know you won’t do it with the others, mate.  Just – fuck, just go ahead.  Won’t tell a soul.”

Zayn nods, teeth clenching his bottom lip like the safety chord of a parachute.  His eyes bat shut against prickly tears that probably look like cascading stars under the moon beams.

Harry’s arms tighten around him on his next breath and no amount of prescribed drugs could medicate him like Harry’s soft humming or the tickle of his long, bony fingers or the cherry touch of his smile to the stretch of Zayn’s neck.

“Go ahead,” Harry repeats, a little softer but with all of the normalcy Zayn’s been missing for these few hours of dark against dark.  “Be mad, mate.  Fuck it all.  Just c’mon.”

And Zayn does.  He clenches his eyes against the sting and mutes the sob with his pillow and trembles until the exhaustion suffocates his bones and muscles.  He curves his spine, Harry moving with him, and slips away from control into a drowsy, aching state.

Harry scratches his promise through the fabric of Zayn’s shirt and, days later, Harry still doesn’t tell anyone.

 

/*/

 

The day of his release is a cold, cold morning and too early for the sun to pick the clouds apart and warm his skin.  He’s still hazy on pain relievers and restless exhaustion but Harry manages to tug him into a hoodie while Niall ties his boots.  The nurses offer him a cane and a wheelchair, all that he declines except Louis makes him take the cane for a ‘ _just in case’_ – or the _‘this may never go away’_ none of them have said aloud yet, not to him – and Liam’s so kind, thanking the interns and autographing stuff for the entire floor while Harry slips a pair of Aviators on Zayn’s face, toys with his hair until Zayn slaps him away.

He’s fidgety and gruff as they lead him through the dead halls, Paul listing off instructions and barking at Harry for tweeting _‘good morning’_ messages to his followers.  He bites relentlessly at his lip until they’re in the lift, the slow drop leaving him unbalanced.  Liam offers him hot coffee and careful fingers over his hip that he unconsciously leans into – or purposely, he can’t decide – while Louis calls his mum, her voice choked from the other side of the mobile.

They bracket him like a fence, coil around him like barbed wire, huddle around him like the moon and sun during an eclipse once their outside in the icy air.  It’s too early for a large group of reporters but he still feels the pulse of the flashing cameras against the side of his face, the endless questions shouted at him rather than the others.  Tight fingers bruise the inside of his arm, Paul’s hand, as they rush him through fumbling steps and, for once in a long, long time, he’s frightened.  Not by the reporters or the cold or the push-pull factor.

It scares him because he can’t see any of it.  He can taste their venom, hear their chants, feel them reaching for him.  He can smell the frost in the air and he shakes under Paul’s careful lead.  But he can’t see his boys or the skyline or the small huddle of fans just to his left who plead for him with tears soaking their trembling voices.

“Back off, you pricks,” Louis demands, suddenly not barricading Zayn’s left.

“Open the fucking doors already,” Niall grumbles, loosely vibrating from in front of him.

“A little further,” Harry promises even though he’s not _right there_ , embedded into the opposite side of Louis.

There’s a brush of fingers on the small of his back, a hand gripping his waist to settle his tripping feet and trembling legs.

“Take your time,” Liam says, louder than the shouts, stronger than the traffic outside.  “Just like we practiced.”

Zayn nods at nothing, closes his eyes behind the sunglasses while cornering a piece of his bottom lip.  He remembers Liam leading him down the hallways between lunch and dinner, day after day, chatting about _the First Avenger_ and the meaning behind Jean Grey dying _twice_ in the X-Men films and the casting brilliance in the Nolan arc.  A hand guiding his against the walls until Zayn knew every corner and the way his feet sounded over the tiles and Liam’s sure fingers in the dip of his back like a child learning to ride a bicycle.

He remembers that sunlight smile smothered into his shoulder when Zayn took his first few steps, unguided, by himself, and the happy sound Liam made when Zayn crashed into his chest.  The strong arms that circled him and the gentle hands that patted his bum like _‘good job’_ and _‘I’m proud,’_ even if Zayn’s heard those words a dozen times over from Liam’s lips.

There’s shoving from the sides of him and he nearly stumbles into the van until urgent fingers tug on his hoodie, balance him, guide him those first few steps before he’s wedged next to Harry – fresh apricot and ripe tangerine scent this morning – and encased in a metal tunnel.  He can hear the incessant pounding against the glass, Paul barking out orders, vapid swearing from Louis behind him before motion kicks in and he’s clenching at his muscles to stop the shaking.

He doesn’t think he’ll ever get used to the motion of a vehicle – and he’s not meant to; _this is temporary_ , they tell him over and over – or the weightless feeling or the dizzy blur across his stomach.  His lungs expand to the size of his chest and everything on the inside calms under the spell of soft music from the radio, the fuck-it-all chats Louis and Niall have in the backseat about the upcoming football season and their picks.  The mess of curls in his lap belong to Harry, soft but thick between his fingers as Harry snores off last night’s hangover.

“Fuck it all, I need a plate of eggs and bacon and American waffles and a bowl of porridge,” Niall whines, fingers digging into the leather of the seat in front of him, close enough for his knuckles to brush Zayn’s back.

“Always hungry,” Louis grumbles and laughs, thumping his fist across the seat to the punch of Queen on the radio.

“And I’m no good to you lot when I’m _starved_ ,” Niall groans, slipping back and his heat follows him into his seat.

“No complaining Niall,” Paul hisses from the front, the shake of the van unsettling Zayn.  He slips across the leather, nudges into Liam.

A strong arm comes around his shoulders, pulls him closer, thick fingers sliding through Zayn’s product-free hair.  Dull nails against his scalp, the hum of Journey from the small speakers, the combination of citrus from Harry and sharp coastal woods from Liam center him.  He feels the prickle of Liam’s buzz cut brush against his lips when he ducks down for a laugh, catching his smile on Zayn’s shoulder.

“Zayn eats first,” Liam warns them through filtered giggles.

Zayn wonders how round his smile makes his cheeks, the slit of cinnamon eyes in the shadows, how low his fuzzy eyebrows sit while laughing.  He presses his tongue to his teeth for a smile that he shares with the window rather than any of them.

“Always the hero, aren’t ya?” Niall teases, spluttering a giggle.  “Fucking Clark Kent.”

“Bruce Wayne,” Louis puts in, his snicker just as disarming.

“Scott Summers.”

“Bruce Banner.”

“ _Dick Grayson_ ,” they say together like it’s practiced, like they’ve been waiting on this.

Liam half-turns in his seat, knocking Zayn away a fraction and there’s a thump, a smack, unruly yelling that Paul sighs at and all of the sounds drown out the ‘ _more like Dick-in-Zayn-son’_ that trickles past Niall’s lips.

Zayn slumps his shoulders, even when Liam’s arm curls back around them, and closes his eyes to the noise of a city breezing past the windows.  Harry drools into his lap, the road endless beneath his feet.  He settles his head to Liam’s shoulder, ignores the cooing from behind him and Liam hums off a few bars of old Elton John that he remembers from too many Decembers ago – _it’s a little bit funny, this feeling inside. I’m not one of those who can easily hide_ – while his fingers push against the ink on the inside of Zayn’s forearm.  He imagines it’s the keys of on an old piano in some hotel ballroom where Liam would hide off with his head hanging low and a goofy smile orbiting his lips.

It’s just enough for his thoughts to stray away from seeing a gray-blue city streak by the windows or the buzzing grins on Niall and Louis’ lips.  He shuts his eyes behind Harry’s sunglasses with Louis’ beanie on his head and Niall’s old iPod tucked into his pocket while Liam’s lips roam his temple to ink _‘I hope you don’t mind, I hope you don’t mind that I put into words’_ into his system.

He drifts asleep on the harmonies Niall and Louis provide – Harry too, sleepily with an echo of snores – and the way Liam smiles into his hair with a tight arm around his loose shoulders; his own safety blanket.

 

/*/

 

They’re in Chicago first.

The record company books them at some high-end, posh palace that’ll draw too much attention – the kind Niall is still scared of, the kind that Zayn still can’t breathe through – and they defy the rules, Paul’s pleading too, to book a floor of rooms at some dodgy hotel on the eastside of the city.  It’s located just north of some greasy burger joint for Niall and a row of thrift stores for Harry to explore and close enough to one of the Great Lakes for Louis to revel in.  There’s decent bargain coffee from a low-end shop around the corner and a continental breakfast that Niall doesn’t scoff at and the chill reminds him of walks in London, the five of them, before all of this was so big, so global.

Paul doesn’t settle on any tour dates, no specific venues as a precautionary and they dwell for the first two days in anonymity amongst the hot dogs and dense traffic and city lights he can’t see but feels inch up his skin when Niall walks him down broken sidewalks for a taste of night air.

“Maybe we should start up with a Twitcam,” Harry offers halfway through their newly practiced harmonies of _What Makes You Beautiful_ , this version without him – _‘it’s a_ just in case _if you can’t do it, mate’_ Louis assures and Zayn almost believes him.

“Those never go over well,” Niall laughs, somewhere close to Harry on the oversized bed that feels like a twin with five boys stuffed on it.

“Mine do,” Liam argues softly from the foot of the bed, tugging at the sheets, knuckles brushing the soles of Zayn’s feet until it’s too ticklish for him to bare.

“Yours look like cheap porn, mate,” Louis corrects, that righteous arrogance he invokes so well ringing through his voice.  “Like really, really bad gay porn.”

“You’ve been watching really, really bad gay porn?” Niall queues, sounding curious.

“Without us?” Harry adds, wounded.

Louis scoffs, stealing the pillow from beneath Zayn’s feet and it lands somewhere near Harry and Niall, knocking them off balance and crashing to the floor.  Zayn snorts and silently apologizes to the guests on the floor below, shaking his head.

The room stinks of Niall’s dirty socks and sweaty boys and expensive cologne that doesn’t mask anything.  He’s certain he stumbled over an old cardboard box of pizza – Niall’s addiction for authentic Chicago slices of pepperoni and sausage and peppers – and Harry’s scarf is on one of the doorknobs, Liam’s trainers tucked neatly beneath the bed.  It’s their catacomb from the world and Zayn hasn’t found an interest in leaving since they’ve arrived.

“I watched it on _Hazza’s_ phone.  Shit quality stuff,” Louis declares, almost drunk off secondhand brand beer Niall begged off of Paul for a night in.

“Probably so,” Harry says offhandedly and Zayn can almost taste the smile swelling on cherry lips.  “Remember that one with the blonde and his mate.  Wicked positions and bad groaning.  Like, he swallowed the other dude down and fingered him and – “

Liam squeaks while Zayn buries his laugh into his shoulder, fumbling a hand across the sheets to find Louis’ messy hair.  He can almost measure the distance between all of them now, the positioning of the bathroom, the steps it takes to get to the desk or the places they hide the remote so he won’t cut off their marathon of _the Walking Dead_ for the episodes of _Shameless_ he still hasn’t viewed but listens to –

He’s gotten good at sketching out the scenes in his head, the characters, the way he would’ve played things out.  It’s imaginative but it keeps him from the irritation and frustration because it’s been _ten days_ now and that feels so far from _‘temporary.’_

Harry nestles in next to him, the way he always does when he wants to cuddle or pretend that he’s not watching Niall’s every twitch for a chance to snog him, coerce him into a blowjob that they’ll all hear and gag at.

Zayn maps out the fabric of his beanie, half pushed off his head to expose thick curls.  His suit jacket is that rough velvet material, the sleeves artfully rolled up over the tattoos, his t-shirt with a low-slung collar leaving more skin exposed.  He tries to catalogue where those swallows were branded, the cold metal of his necklaces, the fuss of his heart against that canopy of a ribcage.  He fingers the Leeds bracelet that he knows without touch, the beaded ones, threaded pieces Louis bought him while Harry slips a pair of Ray Bans over Zayn’s wide eyes.

It’s silly, really, the way Harry always makes him wear sunglasses now.  It’s a protective mechanism Harry uses because he doesn’t like the world staring at him with his eyes wide open and nothing but hollowed shadows replacing the spectrum of colors and shapes and images that used to be there.  He can _feel_ their stares – the people on the streets, the hotel staff, half of their entourage – when Liam leads him to the lift or when Louis escorts him to the bathroom or when Niall walks him through the streets.

He pretends, plays on oblivious but he knows.

“We could do a small show,” Louis suggests, fumbling around on the bed until Zayn is certain he’s halfway into Niall’s lap and stealing some of his Coke.  “Just, you know, invite a few fans.  Maybe something over the radio.”

“Half the globe will be there,” Harry laughs, anchoring Zayn to the center of the bed with a heavy arm.

He tilts his head back, tastes the smoke on his tongue from his last cigarette – the one Liam let him smoke in the emergency stairwell with their breaths bouncing off the concrete walls and their knees knocking between the steel railings.  He licks at dry lips, an absent movement he’s so aware of now.

“A secret location,” Niall announces like they’re plotting to destroy governments instead of find the balance between a car wreck and, well, a train wreck.  “Colorado isn’t far from here, right?”

Louis snorts while Harry groans and Zayn balances a laugh on his lips, his nose scrunching the sunglasses further up his face.

“Do you lot really – I mean, this isn’t going to be weird, right?” Niall asks around a strangled sound and the collapse of his own throat.

Louis hums and Harry tightens his arm like _strength_ and _willpower_.  Zayn catches his lip, the one already bitten raw from an afternoon of phone calls from his family and Louis feeding him spicy curry from some dive restaurant a few blocks away.

“We _are_ weird,” Louis offers, distantly.

“Complete idiots,” Liam adds with a snicker, his knuckles brushing the curve of Zayn’s foot.

“Fucking hell, we’ve mucked up things before so,” Harry drags out, weightless next to Zayn.  He bumps his hip to Zayn’s and his smile inches down Zayn’s shoulder until Zayn’s mouth twitches.  “We’d still just be five manic chaps who want to sing.”

Zayn nods slowly, repeating the words in his head like a mantra, like a reason to go on.

The bed creaks and dips again, a fuss over the duvet and leftover salty chips from the burger joint and achingly familiar fingers coarse over the nape of his neck while stronger hips nudge his right side.  His teeth bite down on a grin, his chin tucking to shade the blush.

Liam’s wearing one of those freshly pressed Oxford’s like he does when he’s going on a date or too lazy to ask the services to do his laundry for him.  It’s stiff against Zayn’s bare arm, crest with the scent of lavender.  Zayn feels around the expanse of his chest, down his sternum with a grin because the buttons are done up unsystematically, missing a few holes, leaving the shirt puckered – because Liam is meticulous with everything except his clothing.  Liam shrugs him off like a joke but curls his fingers around Zayn’s neck like a puppeteer.

Louis makes a noise, halfway across the room and too far out of Zayn’s reach.  Harry giggles to his side while Niall sputters on Coke.

“ _Oh Leeyum_ , babe, he’s blind.  He’s not going anywhere,” Louis teases with a swoon in his voice.  His bare feet thud against the carpet and the bed jumps when he launches himself onto it, onto Niall.  Ragged nails scratch at Zayn’s ankle before he adds, “I promise we won’t steal your toy away.”

There’s a whine trapped against the muscles of a throat and Zayn thinks it’s Liam but Harry’s so close now, like an observant owl.

“Oh leave ‘im be, Tommo,” Harry sighs, sounding so chuffed.  His fingers meet Liam’s on the back of Zayn’s neck, shoving them higher until Liam’s are tangled in Zayn’s hair.  “He’s his favorite.”

“We don’t have favorites,” Niall pouts.

It’s Rule Number Three from a decoded list of _‘Bro Laws’_ made by Harry and Niall years ago – _no choosing one mate over the others_.  They’ve all broken it, along with the ‘ _no shagging in the same room as your sleeping bandmate’_ and _‘no interrupting a wank for a bag of crisps’_ and _‘no smoking while wearing Liam Payne’s clothing’_ – but they never really call each other on it.

They should, but they don’t.

“Oh, shut it.  Your favorite is Harry and you know it,” Louis argues, their wrestling all laughter and quick slaps.

“Only ‘cause he gives me head when I’m sleepy,” Niall notes with his feet suddenly in Zayn’s lap.

“Only because I swallow,” Harry sings out and Liam cringes next to Zayn.

“That too,” Niall says soppily, his grin pronounced in his tone.  “Only because he swallows like all good blowjob givers should.”

“You’re gross,” Louis tells him, Zayn etching out the shadows like charcoal against a notepad to sketch out the curl of Louis’ upper lip.

“And you’re celibate so fuck right off,” Niall laughs.

“By _choice_ ,” Louis hisses, their fighting continuing to the floor, feet knocking the bed, groans muffled by hands and he’s almost certain their skin will be bruised from carpet burn.

“By lack of pussy, you tosser.”

Zayn grins, scoots closer to Liam when Harry shoves off the bed to separate them.  His fingers feel through cheap linen, lumpy blankets in search of something.  He finds it in the small divide that parts their hips, the corner of Liam’s waist – a soft, calloused hand that’s led him through the war and the darkness he’s stranded in.

He smiles to nothing but shadows when Liam doesn’t say anything, curls his fingers around Zayn’s and refuses to move.  The rough of his stubble drags over Liam’s skin, just behind the collar and he wonders how raw and pink his flesh looks afterwards.  He takes in a corner of his lip again and waits for Liam to knock off those stupid sunglasses before pressing his face into Liam’s neck, pretending the dark spots across his eyes are just faded out ripples of tan and gold – the _almost_ shade of Liam’s skin in the dark.

 

/*/

 

They’re downtown and it’s that sharp kind of cold that bites the skin just between the layers of clothing on the morning of their first interview after the accident.  It’s on some small, local broadcast that is tapped into by MTV and other networks and he’s backstage with his hands fisted by his side and Lou fixing his hair.

“Stay still,” she hisses but it’s undercut with so much affection like _I’ve missed you_ and _I’m sorry I wasn’t there_ that he smiles, half-on, and tilts his chin down for the fog of hairspray that keeps his hair upright.

Harry offers him orange juice and Liam sneaks him bagels and they’re all so quiet, even if he can feel the noise of their hearts vibrating every time they knock past him.

“Remember, don’t rush,” Liam whispers around the producers and the stage crew, fixing Zayn’s bare-thin shirt and fiddling with his hair even when Lou snaps at him from a few feet away.

“I know,” he says, his throat still raw and hoarse from two cigarettes and a night of not enough sleep.

“Let Tommo do the talking,” Liam adds, close enough to drown out the scent of cheap coffee with sweet vanilla bean body wash.

Zayn drags his knuckles across Liam’s hip, hoping it’s discreet but it’s really not from the strained whine Niall makes just to the left.

“I know,” he repeats, huffing when Liam’s fingers outline the hollow of his collarbones, press out the wrinkles of his Henley.

“And just look to the left because that’s where the hosts are sitting,” Liam sighs, fingers still fidgeting and his actions are so blurred.

Zayn bites on his lip to evaporate the growl in his throat.

“I know.”

“’s still morning, Payner,” Louis calls out from behind, his voice a clarity in the noise of shuffling furniture and metal scraping.  “Have you forgotten how moody the chap is before eleven?”

“Before _noon_ ,” Harry nearly serenades, shrugging an arm around Zayn’s already slouched shoulders.  “Don’t be such a prat, Zee.  I reckon Leeymo just wants to make sure you’re alright.”

He bites at the last _‘I know’_ on the center of his tongue to press out an artificial smile that none of them believe but don’t trouble him over.  He curls his fingers into a few belt loops on Liam’s jeans, too far down his waist for Zayn not to brush his thumb over the soft fabric of tight boxer-briefs.  He nods in the direction he prays Liam is in and waits, the last of his oxygen collapsed in his lungs, until Liam squeezes back an _‘okay.’_

“Just – take your time, babe,” Liam whispers, forehead pressed to Zayn’s, sharing breaths and – hopefully – smiles.

“I will,” he says back, muting the _‘for you’_ because it’s not the time and so inappropriate.

It’s so inappropriate to feel this way when he can’t see if the definition in Liam’s eyes is louder than the thump of his heart.

 

/*/

 

“Oh.  Tell me more.”

It feels like slipping into your favorite vintage shirt from years ago – the interview.  The hosts are lovely, polite, a bit daft about their music but he doesn’t think it matters.  It all feels rehearsed, the same questions they’ve gotten a dozen times before – _tell me about your love lives, do you feel like the Beatles, what do you do in your spare time, who’s the loudest_ – and their answers are still the same, even after they’ve repeated them so much that the words feel foreign.

He smirks at the way Harry, typically, flirts with the female host who sounds almost like one of the giggly teenagers in the too, too small audience.  Niall’s an uncontrollable spark of a well-lit inferno, chatty as if he’s _missed_ this.  Zayn thinks, distantly, they all have in some way.  He thinks Louis never tires of telling that story of the first real meal he made for a date – and the way he always, _always_ replaces _‘Harry Styles’_ with _‘me girlfriend’_ without missing a beat.

Liam fields most of the questions – _sensible, responsible_ , he thinks with the kind of smile you can’t shake for hours.  They drink imitation breakfast tea and freshly roasted coffee from some knock-off Starbucks franchise and he knows he’s wedged between Louis and Harry because they’re protective and distracting and talkative enough that he merely has to smile and pitch in anecdotes when the others forget their lines.

“And you’re Irish, right?” the male host with his poor rendition of a British accent throughout the first fifteen minutes of the interview and he’s no Alan Carr, yet half of his jokes are laughable but proper funny.

He leans back into the stiff chair he’s sat in, smiles into his fist at Niall’s same glittery response and he loves the way Harry plays coy about it all.  He’s distracted by the small shrieks from the girls in the audience, the way they cry and laugh and he hadn’t realized how long they’ve been missing until now –

And it aches up his skin, the way they’ve been stranded in their own world so long.  The way _recovery_ and _post-traumatic disorders_ feel like an excuse for the way that they just needed a break.  They needed each other.

Louis’ fingers are tickling up his neck in that odd way that’s not for attention.  He coughs on a laugh at all of the dirty jokes Louis whispers to him between questions about home and the Queen and fuck-it-all talks about boxers or briefs – _‘She’s eyeing Harry like she wants to get on her knees right now’_ and _‘I bet she hadn’t gotten on any knickers, mate’_ and _‘think Niall’s plotting to assassinate her or ask her for a right proper threesome afterwards, Zee, I swear by it’_ – and he nudges Louis away before they’re too obvious.

It feels serendipitous and strangely normal in ways he’s not ready for.  The way they’re just five lads again, even when Niall talks about the accident and Louis stretches across his lap to show off the scars from the stitches.  He manages through the questions about his favorite songs from the new album, even when the blush settles heavy against his cheeks while talking about _Last First Kiss_ and writing it with Louis and Liam, Harry’s fingers pinching his side for the _‘I had someone special in mind while writing it’_ that he doesn’t attach.

Their laughter moves in unison, almost euphoric and bright and he sways to the hum of the audience as they sing loudly through their songs during the commercials.  He tangles his fingers with Louis, squeezes back when Louis grins into his shoulder.  He can hear Niall exchanging numbers with the sound engineer and, slowly, all of the pieces fit except one –

He doesn’t mention to Louis or nudge at Harry to switch seats with Liam but, underneath this thin layer of bravado, he hopes they understand.  It’s an _almost_ when Harry shuffles next to him, Louis making a soft whine like _‘you’re so obvious Malik, just say it’_ but everything moves back into the same rhythm when the lights queue up on his face again and the hosts start up.

“And how is it for you, Zayn?” she asks, clearing her throat.  He stiffens a little, willing his lips into a playful smile before she adds, “I mean, this must be hardest on you, not being able to see anything.  How do you continue on?  What’s your motivation?”

He struggles around a swallow – he knew, at some point, this was coming – and the sweat coating his palms smears against his jeans.  He straightens in his chair, gently knocks back the tea Louis offers him.  He sniffs and he knows Lou will murder him if he fucks out his hair with his fingers but he can’t help it.

“Well, I – “

“I mean, come on, man.  Seriously.  This must be devastating, right?” the male host asks and Zayn’s lip is chewed painfully raw by nervous teeth.  “I’ve heard all of the media outlets say it’s temporary and the doctors are promising you’ll see again, but you have to be nervous, right?  To not be able to see your friends, these guys.  And your mum, too.  You’ve got sisters as well, yeah?  I mean – “

There’s a swell in his chest, monstrous and too big.  His throat is dry and all of the edges melt away.  All of this perfectly perfected composure he rehearsed in the acoustic-heavy bathroom with Harry while Niall sang every other line of the Bangles brightly goes static.  Even the white noise, the one he always associates with his thoughts now, falls silent to the gasps of the audience and the way Harry stopped breathing three minutes ago.

Harry and Louis’ fingers meet in the middle on the nape of his neck, tangling over the silver fern and his shoulders square, his limbs stiffen, and Niall’s words echo in tunnel of his mind – _‘we almost died’_ – until every meter of breath in his body turns cold.  He tips his chin down, trying to distant the coos from the audience because the sting across his eyes – blurring the shadows and opaque shades of grey and he wishes for bright splattered color there instead – burns like fingers over a blue flame.

“I hope you don’t mind us asking but your fans are concerned and – “

The thing is he _doesn’t_ mind them asking.  He’s waited on it since five minutes into the interview and discussions of their favorite foods or the best city they’ve visited.  It’s the in-between, the anticipation, the hope that it’ll never come that numbs him.

His fingers scratch at the fraying pieces of acid wash jeans while Louis’ ankle knocks against his like he doesn’t have to answer.

It doesn’t feel like the world stops, merely moves in reverse like being told to dance on a too big stage in front of a judging panel or to control the tremble in his voice while singing Mario or meeting a boy with eyes like ocean wet sand, soft hands, the voice of a fallen angel and fringe so thick in his eyes at a McDonald’s for the first time.  He nearly chokes on his next breath and the words he practiced for so long they felt inked to his tongue won’t come.

They _don’t_ come seems more appropriate.

“The accident was rough on all of us,” Harry says instead, curling an arm around Zayn’s slumped shoulders, leaning in so protectively that Zayn thinks the world will never understand how incorrect they are if they think that being the youngest makes Harry the weakest.

“Yeah,” Niall puffs out, the edge of his voice annoyed but still warm.  “We’ve all lost something.”

The beat of silence between them crashes like the wild edge of a summer tide until Louis snorts next to him and Harry follows with a childish giggle while Niall reaches across too much space to squeeze his hand.

“I think I might’ve lost about forty quid in that damn van,” Louis grumbles halfheartedly but with every inch of sarcasm he can spare between the fingers coiled around Harry’s on Zayn’s neck and the shiver of his body with another laugh.

“Lost my iPod,” Niall tosses in for the fuck that Zayn can’t give.

“I think Zayn nicked it, mate,” Harry points out and the hosts laugh before his senses unravel themselves from the steel wire dislocating his flow of oxygen.

He eases into them with a soft smile, genuine and effervescent like he remembers from Leeds or Wellington or that too big stage with four boys he didn’t know yet but, by the third day, they felt like _home_ –

When they’re ushered backstage and Lou is sighing over the mussed hair and the crew is giving them space like they can’t breathe, he’s gentled into a corner of their dressing room where Kings of Leon takes up the background and Louis leads the band through warm-ups just in case.  His cheeks are flushed and he’s learning to breathe in the clouds rather than _peace of mind_ like he taught himself when he was younger.  His teeth catch on his bottom lip under the scent of vanilla and hair wax until familiar, wanted fingers cup his cheeks and a breathy laugh washes his face.

“You did good.”

“I was shit,” he scoffs, kicking at a foot probably wrapped in clean Converse.  He tips his chin down defiantly, even against the calloused fingers and thumbs that swipe away misguided tears just beneath his eyelashes.

Liam’s laugh is like those sunsets in New York City, their first time out there, where every inch of iron and glass was spray painted tangerine.  He thinks of Louis singing, at the top of his lungs, while on a rooftop too far from the pavement below – _Can’t sleep in the city of neon and chrome_ – until a forehead is pressed to his own.

“Shut it, mate,” Liam giggles, his voice even and not put on in the least.  Thumbs press into the highest peak of his cheekbones and he smiles back even if he can’t see Liam doing the same.  “You were ace, man, you were.  You smashed it.”

Zayn snorts, teeth ripping at chapped flesh and still sore bits from earlier.  He can’t nod, not like this, but his fingers wrap loosely around Liam’s wrist, across the definition of a sinewy back and he practices that old trick where they breathed in synch before harmonizing.

His fingers push at Liam’s watch until they can spread over the arch of his wrist to feel the _‘only time will tell…’_ inked there, the raise of Liam’s skin a giveaway he monopolizes.

“We don’t have to talk about it, yeah?” he nearly pleads, his nose scrunching at the quiet pause in Liam’s breathing.

He can almost hear Liam’s smile before he replies, “Not now, mate.  But some day, yeah?  I’d really like to know.”

Zayn’s eyes shut to hide the emotions, to guard the way he wants to tell Liam all of his secrets like they did, at sixteen, when they barely knew each other.  He merely chokes out a noise that resembles a _‘yes’_ before slouching against the wall Liam has him pressed to, thumbing at the collar of Liam’s shirt and pretending not to hear Harry’s swooning and Niall’s awful Frank Sinatra impersonation – _strangers in the night, two lonely people_.

He doesn’t balk when they all crowd around him, four sets of hands reaching all of the little points of him that offset the tears and frustration.  His fingers dig into Liam though, for safety and a way out.

Any way out.

 

/*/

 

He’s drowsy in a coffin of blankets, luxury hotel pillows, somewhere in Detroit with Drake in one ear and the taste of late night tea – iced with caramel because it was Liam’s but they don’t talk about how he pushed it into Zayn’s hand and dashed a kiss across Zayn’s cheek – when Harry crawls into his bed.

It’s not the citrus or mandarin or even the curls that give Harry away this time.  It’s the soft whimper like a wounded dog – usually associated with Liam but he’s grown out of it while Harry’s still, well, vulnerable in ways they don’t discuss – and the long fingers on his neck and the soft – _deliberate_ – shove of his hip to Zayn’s.  Zayn knocks off annoyance even though he’s sleepy and a little overwhelmed after two weeks of _nothingness_ to roll over and nudge back into Harry, nudging their ankles.

“Chocolate chip biscuits are in Louis’ room, not mine, mate,” Zayn says immediately because they’ve lost track of how many times _‘hello’_ and _‘how are you’_ never really fit into their vocabulary.

“Are you quite finished?” Harry asks, Louis’ influence so present in his bones, his voice.

Zayn snorts, nodding.  He makes room for the absent arm Harry strings around his shoulders, pushing back the fringe he refuses to let Lou cut and Harry Styles has always been insufferable when it comes to deflection but Zayn tolerates it.

“The moon is bright tonight, bro,” Harry sighs, teasing fingers up Zayn’s bare shoulder.

Zayn purses his lips, shoves them sideways against his face.  He thinks of the spaces where he wants to add more ink across his skin, start up a sleeve over wiry muscle and lengthen his dedication to art with little mementos.

“Wish you could see it,” Harry whispers, tensing after the words.

Zayn grins, exhaling loudly for the effect.  “I wish I could see _anything_ , Haz.  Except the way you dress, mate.  It’s terrible.”

“I was voted best dressed two years in a – “

“By a bunch of girls who want to blow you, bro.  Not by the fashion elite,” Zayn notes, choking on his own smirk.

Harry nudges him roughly but just on the side of brotherly with the sweep of his arm.

“Nialler and Leeymo are out with Tommo,” Harry says, his voice drifting under the cool hum of the heater.

Zayn scrubs the heel of his palm over his eyes, rubbing out the sleep before leaning further into Harry.

“Fancy a cuddle or summat?” he asks, pushing down a yawn.  He bobs his head to a song he hasn’t learned yet with percussion he likes and lyrics he wants to stitch over his forearm – _‘I’m so proud of you.’_

Harry’s laugh echoes like thunderstorms just east of London – in the valley, across countryside, in the billows of tree branches.  His curls drape against Zayn’s temple and his fingers move like wired up nerves on cocaine.  The burn is sweet, the pressure building.

“I think I’m falling, mate,” Harry squeezes out like a dirty secret.

Zayn feels the way his smile inches up, flecks at the corners and he mimics it with his eyes closed.

“I can see that, dude – “

“You can’t see shit,” Harry laughs out, tightening his arm.

Zayn smirks, knocks his elbows to Harry’s ribs before finishing, “You’re a disaster, Haz.  Always have been.  When you were in love with Tommo – “

“That was not love,” Harry counters, a little sheepish but with confidence drawn tight like the string of a bow.  “It was like the way you admire Wolverine or summat.”

Zayn nods, shoving down the _‘but you called him your Romeo every morning’_ because it’s not relevant.  Not now, at least.

“Who is it?” Zayn wonders, knowing smile curving his lips upward, pushing his cheeks higher.

Harry lets out a deep breath, pressing closer.  He’s skittish, on the verge of retreating until Zayn pinches his thigh.

“It’s more than the head and the cuddles in bed and, I swore it was just something mates do,” Harry starts, the words colliding.  There’s alarm in his voice, bright and swirling like the lights of a police cab.

“Mates don’t do what you and the Nialler do,” Zayn insists, playing out a laugh with a slow exhale.

Harry squeaks.  “You and Liam – “

“We _don’t_ ,” Zayn argues, trying to soothe the tension in his bones because they don’t –

Even if, suddenly, he wishes they did.  Even if, somehow, he thinks they could have.  Or _should_ have.

“I dunno,” Harry breathes out, the rough of his voice still honey-sweet.  “It’s just – it’s nice, Zayner.  Like, it’s just – it’s really nice.”

Zayn smiles because Harry is long stories and slow realizations and his affection for all of them is borderline manic but Zayn can hear his smile, his certainty.

“S’okay, Haz,” he promises, nudging into Harry’s side until he loosens.  “It happens to the best of us.”

“Yeah.”

Zayn licks his tongue over his lips, the ones raw and aching because he wonders what kissing a best mate tastes like –

_Uncalled for_ , he thinks, bruising his own conscience with the venom in his denial.

“D’ya wanna chill here tonight?  Think it’s Tommo’s turn but we both know he’ll be pissed by the time Ni and Liam drag him back in,” Zayn offers, tilting his head onto Harry’s shoulder.

“Only if you’ll let me enlighten you on the joys of Artic Monkeys and this new band I found – the 1975.  They’re ridiculous, dude, I swear,” Harry hums, sounding amused and bright.

Zayn snorts, tilting away with a small whine.  There’s something genuine about the way Harry’s fingers wrap around his wrist, the way they shuffle through Niall’s stolen iPod and find all of the songs they have in common – and the ones they don’t that Zayn teaches Harry – while the night blankets the city.  He stretches across Harry’s chest, grins at those boney fingers in his hair, the cool metal from his rings, and Zayn chews at his lip until he doesn’t mind the shadows behind his eyelids.

Until he’s comfortable with the darkness that follows him everywhere.

 

/*/

 

“Honestly, I don’t think I ever quite got Harry Potter or half the words in it.”

Their world feels like it’s on pause in this city – not quite full-stop or hyphenated standstill but a simple pause.

He’s told it’s Albany but the scents outside are something like Manhattan and the rush of traffic in the middle of the evening is like Brooklyn and the stiff, cold air reminds him of Newark and he loves how he remembers all of the names because, on the last tour, Liam kept a folded map with him to learn all of his favorite places across the States.

It’s another hotel with foreign sheets and room service and square inches of space he has to learn by touch instead of sight.  He imagines this hotel isn’t quite as nice as the one in Detroit, rather an old landmark this city prides itself on.  He knows the lift sticks between the third and fourth floor and the carpet feels rough between his toes.  But, somehow, it feels like a garden of tranquility when Liam guides him into _his_ room instead of _Zayn’s_ , props him in the middle of the bed and an ocean of warm blankets with a bottle of orange juice and a stack of novels.

“What parts don’t you get, mate?” he wonders, pressing into the mountain of pillows Liam’s surrounded him with, twiddling bare toes against soft, soft sheets.

He can almost hear the grin in Liam’s voice, the sheepish twitch of those sugar spun lips before he cautiously replies, “All of it.”

Zayn snorts, stretching against the cotton of his button up.  Half of the buttons are already undone by Liam’s coy fingers, the rest lazily done with a few missing holes – because Liam helped dress him this morning, not that he had to because Zayn’s grown accustom to doing more things by himself, but he didn’t deny Liam that moment.  He half-presses a calf to Liam’s shin, the tangle of their legs so relevant to his calm now.

He sniffs, drags skittish fingers over the hair on Liam’s forearm, searching for the opened book on his chest.

“But which parts?” Zayn asks, a little gentler.

Liam huffs, turning a little to press an idle hip to Zayn’s, bumping the arch of his foot to the curve of Zayn’s.

“I dunno, Zee.  I mean, I’ve seen _most_ of the films – “

Zayn does his best to restrain the sound of disdain in his throat but it comes out choked, little semi-colons of disappointment.

“I skipped the fourth one, the sixth one too, I think.  Couldn’t quite get into them,” Liam explains, pushing his knuckles into Zayn’s ribs to silence the aborted giggles escaping his lips.

“The sixth was rather important to the whole series, Li.  The discoveries made there, man, they were massively important.  And Dumbledore’s death was – wow, can’t believe you skipped out on it,” Zayn insists, awed by the slow strum of Liam’s fingers rather than his admissions.

“They’re just so long, the books,” Liam sighs and Zayn pictures a scrunched nose, furrowed eyebrows, the slow slide of a pink tongue over full lips to leave them slick.

He’s not in love with the idea or his best mate or this little pause in their journey.

“The films are pretty wicked, though,” Liam notes, dull nail scratching under the sleeve of Zayn’s shirt, unfastening the cuff, rolling the material upward to thumb at his yin-yang.

“Yeah,” Zayn breathes out with a crisscrossing smile.  He absently presses into Liam’s touch, the one that’s collided with his senses since they were sixteen and a little less confident, bold, still learning to be the quiet ones while Louis, Niall, and Harry started up every riot.

“They’re quite sick, man,” he adds, a slow hand feeling over various surfaces until it catches on prickly buzzed hair.

“But all of this talk about _pure-bloods_ and Muggles,” Liam groans, twisting his body enough that the book slides between them, a valley of too much space Zayn thinks.  “Like I get Quidditch, but I’ve got no proper clue on what the hell a squib is.  I reckon the owls are quite important – “

Zayn sighs fondly, pressing his tongue to the roof of his mouth to swallow the laugh working up the walls of his throat.  His thumb outlines Liam’s hairline, their daze so sweet with voices low, the static of a television in the corner far from distracting.

“I’m proper scared of Death Eaters but what’s the story with Harry and Hermione?  Why didn’t they ever shag?  Or do they?  I never finished the last film,” Liam says, tipping his head back for the force of Zayn’s fingers scratching at his scalp.

Zayn diverts his hand to Liam’s neck, the tendons alive and the muscles stretched.  He doesn’t look in Liam’s direction – he’s become good at that, avoiding the spaces he thinks people are in because he thinks it’s probably a little weird for everyone to look at his hazel eyes when there’s nothing behind them.  His teeth wrestle over his bottom lip while he sinks further into their island of sheets and pillows.

“Do you want to start again?” he asks, his spare hand patting empty spaces for the book.

There’s a distracting sound – a whine, probably from Liam but he’s not quite sure it isn’t from himself when thick fingers tangle with his in the center of their void – and he twines his fingers loosely with Liam’s like they did at seventeen when the world kept getting bigger and wider around them: two lost boys looking for home.

“We’ve been on book one for _hours_ , Zayn,” Liam groans, shifting closer.

Zayn snorts, a little lift of his shoulders for the words he can’t wrap his tongue around.

“Probably not,” Zayn whispers, the corners of his mouth catching the high notes of serenity.  “You keep stopping after page seven – “

“ _Page six_ and how do you even know?”

Zayn grins, shaking his head.  He bumps their shoulders and closes his eyes, the quiet flicker of his eyelashes against his cheeks brought upon by the minty breath on the side of his neck.

“What would you like to do instead, mate?  Ring up Louis?  Fancy a marathon of _the Hangover_ with Niall and Harry?” Zayn offers, disguising the hope in his voice with a smile.

Liam drags the edge of his nose over the collar of Zayn’s shirt, the heel of his foot across the side of Zayn’s bare calf.  His fingers work up the sleeve again, the hollow of Zayn’s elbow, the empty stretch of skin that Zayn’s mapped out for further artwork later on.

“I like reading to you,” Liam says, a nervous hum in his tone.  “I feel like I’m making you feel comfortable – “

“’m always comfortable ‘round you, babe.  You know that,” Zayn laughs, or tries to but the sound isn’t him.  It’s something too big for simple, subtle words to dictate.

There’s a bunched up grin in Liam’s voice, a squeeze around Zayn’s fingers before he says, “You’re all flattery, Malik.  I’m no fucking idiot, though.  I get that ‘m not quite as smart as the rest of the world.”

Zayn bites at a frown.  It’s an unnecessary evil and too cold on his bones right now.  He nudges Liam instead for the _‘shut it, you amazing boy’_ that’s flat on his tongue, trying to raise his courage.

“I’ve got something else I could read, instead,” Liam offers between their uneven breaths.

The smirk that lifts over his lips tilts his brow upward.  “Don’t read me more Twitter messages, babe.  Your followers are quite daft.”

“We share the same followers, you donut,” Liam teases, shifting away and that divide grows in width, complexity.

Zayn leans into the pillows opposite of him rather than chasing Liam across the bed but the steely cold of the sheets lasts seconds before Liam’s back, pressed close.  He’s got fingers around Zayn’s wrist, guiding him to a new book – a glossy cover, silky pages, almost familiar but not.  Liam bites playfully at his shoulder, weaves their legs together again before humming.

“I want to take you on an adventure we both can enjoy,” Liam explains and Zayn snickers at the depth of his tone, the richness of his joy.  “It’s a little book I’d like to call _Batman: Year One_ , mate.  I’m quite certain you’ll be thrilled with its outcome and characters.”

Zayn turns his head a little to make a face at Liam, ignoring his own rule about not looking in the direction of people or letting someone see the gold flecks in the eyes he hasn’t looked upon in weeks now.  His teeth pin his lip and he thinks he hears a gasp in Liam’s voice, an awed fascination he hopes for.

“Well sorted, you idiot,” Zayn says to dull the tension, tipping his head down to hide his eyes.

A thumb, an index finger, the first knuckle of a middle finger push his chin back up.  They hold him like a piece of artwork for a galaxy to view.  It inks blush into his cheeks, leaves him wary but not in that restless way.

In a way he’ll tell his children about one day when they fall, inevitably, for that person they probably shouldn’t.

And he shouldn’t, he knows it.

“Let me show you the wonders of Bruce Wayne, yeah?” Liam suggests, the arch of a smile so bright in his voice.

Zayn waggles his eyebrows, buries himself in Liam’s laugh before they fit together like two kids savoring a weekend away from school and homework.  Everything underneath his skin wishes he could see the look on Liam’s face or the way their fingers look together or even how silly Liam appears with one sock on, one off and vintage jeans and buzzed hair – all of the little things he’s figured out by touch alone.

He’s okay without it though, the visions.  Learning Liam again, without one of his senses, has become his favorite thing to do.

 

/*/

 

New York City seems so much, much smaller when he can’t see the tall glass buildings and the sun streaking the chrome and the dense traffic or even the congestion that always looks like thick Christmas jumpers – knit together people moving in one unsteady pattern.  Niall still refuses to travel anywhere by van and Louis’ suddenly become skittish about travelling by plane because _‘if we almost died in a motorized vehicle than, by all means, we’ll certainly perish by freak of nature lads, the odds are stacked against us, fucking bullshit’_ so they pile into an old tour bus even though they’re not playing venue after venue like the last tour.

No, instead they’re localized to small radio interviews, random appearances at television shows like when they first started up as _‘that band from the X-Factor’_ just to save face –

And Harry basks in the way it feels much more intimate and Liam stays behind for an extra hour to sign every autograph and Niall leads him by the arm with twitching fingers pressing rough bruises into his skin.  The fans swarm them whenever they go outside without disguises on – not that he could ever get away with it, now, because he’s labeled _‘the pretty blind one’_ now everywhere they go.

But this city is still it’s own little world and he recognizes it instantly by the taste of the smoggy air and the soundtrack of standstill traffic and the touch of cool railing leading to the subways and the smell of hot dogs from the vendors crowding the corners.  It twitches a cheap smile against his lips.  His fingers pinch at the definition of Liam’s bicep, pressing into the taut muscles that bounce back against his touch and his reflexes swim against nature when Liam nudges him back while they drift through the thicket of flashing cameras and screeching little girls.

“We should’ve booked _Saturday Night Live_ ,” Harry demands, a little letdown at Paul’s grumble.

“C’mon, mate, we’re not those kinds of rock stars,” Louis teases, swallowed in an oversized jumper that Zayn catalogues into his memory for the soft yarn woven into it and the way he can’t tangle his fingers with Louis’ because the sleeves are too long.

“We haven’t exactly done a proper show yet, Haz, don’t you think that’s a bit massive for five chaps still on the mend?” Liam wonders, knocking his hip to Zayn’s as he walks a little slower for Zayn’s sake.

He’s learning to adapt to new places – the change in sounds, the flow of the floors beneath his feet, the strange scents and cold atmosphere.  He thinks it’s easier with Harry because he’s Zen and patience and loves taking in every inch of space.  Liam too, even though he hates to admit he likes the way Liam’s slow and gentle, willing to move in a gradual cadence like Zayn’s learning to walk again.  It’s better than the way Niall _drags_ him everywhere or the constant sighing from Louis because he can’t stray too far like a child at Disneyland.

Zayn can’t think straight under the hypnotic pull of Liam’s after shave – even though he’s quite fond of Liam’s stubble scratching at his skin when he’s too knackered to shrug away – and their words run in circles about the itinerary for their week-long stay in this city that almost reminds him of London.

_Almost_ , but not enough.

“Central Park is a must,” Harry insists, close enough that Zayn can pick at the dozen bracelets hanging loosely from his wrist.

“Are we doing Letterman?” Niall wonders in that spellbinding voice that crawls out through a sleepy throat and Zayn muses over how fair his blonde hair is now, how droopy those blue eyes sit.

“No, you dolt,” Louis groans carelessly but there’s a scuffle and laughter fading behind the statement.  “But I’ll take you to see the Statue and I promise loads of Irish car bombs when I sneak you into the pubs.”

There’s a riotous laughter – distinctly Niall’s, even over the roar of Paul’s instructions and the entourage and security and the hustle of a busy hotel staff – and Zayn refuses to feign a smile when it comes so naturally.  He tangles his fingers with Harry’s for assistance into the lift, buries himself between Niall and Louis for that caravan of protection they’ve formed around each other – because they’re not quite over the accident or the way it was just the three of them through the battlefield, death on their heels.

He waits along a solid wall, fingertips brushing over the raised paint and brass frames while whispered discussion is sat down the hall.  He bites at his lip, scrunches his nose at the weight of Niall’s Ray Bans on his face and tries to replicate the bass in a Kanye song he listened to on the ride over.  He’s expecting Louis – it’s his turn, in this city, to bunk with Zayn – but a set of calloused fingers drift up his side and catch on his own until knuckles bump and they find the empty spaces between Zayn’s so clumsily.

Zayn grins on instinct alone, recognizes the heavy spill of vanilla and crackling firewood and the light scratch of a thumbnail over the outline of a bird on the back of his hand.  He can feel the tilt of his smile when Liam chuckles nervously and the flash of blush that stings his cheeks is hidden when he tips his chin downward, follows Liam down the hall.  He ignores the catcalls from Niall and the grumbles from Louis like he’s wounded, tripping on the expensive carpet.  The strap of his backpack hangs off the edge of his shoulder and Liam squeezes his hand.  His spare hand learns the angles of the wall, the sharp corner they round, the temperature of the hallway.  He tries to remember the scents and the ping of the elevator, the location of the plants just in case he has to do this alone, without them.

“You’re okay with being stuck with boring old Payner for a week, right?” Liam asks like he’s on the tips of his toes, marching across a frozen lake and waiting for the ice to shatter beneath his feet.

Zayn snorts, adjusts the weight of his backpack, thumbs over the definable scars on Liam’s knuckles.

“S’ppose I could do worse,” Zayn teases, sliding his palm over the surface of the door, the numbers on the outside – _746_ – until he can coordinate bearings and placement.

“Love taking a piss at me, don’t you,” Liam jokes, nudging his hip against Zayn’s.

“Long as ‘m not stuck listening to Harry’s snoring or the stench of Niall’s feet, ‘m fine mate,” Zayn assures him, twisting smile on his lips like he’s helpless.

And, by definition, he is.  For the scent of Liam’s skin and the echo of his smile and the drag of his fingers and the sweet euphony of his soft breaths at night.

“And Lou’s chatter,” Liam puts in, untangling their fingers to press gently against the dip in Zayn’s spine.

Zayn arches into the touch, absently, before Liam leads him into the room.  He reaches back, digs his fingers to the inside of Liam’s arm – for protection, for guidance, for the coil and jump of anxious muscles – and they play on brotherly companionship because they’re nothing else but that.

_Just mates_ , he thinks, a little restless with the idea.

It sits on the back of his tongue as the door swings shut and Liam goes on and on about the spaciousness of the room and the tub and the telly and everything Zayn can’t see for himself –

Like Liam’s smile or his too big eyes or the crinkle around them or the way their fingers find each other again, tight grip and reassuring pinches.

 

/*/

 

They’ve taken to this – nights in instead of rampaging through some foreign city with the bright lights in the background and the whistle of their laughter stampeding their arrival.  It feels completely inappropriate for teenage boys who have life at their feet.  Yet, it’s how they function.  It’s like nights backstage before a show, with the adrenaline pulsing under their skin and their clothes laid out on the backs of couches and the world outside a brilliant echo of cheers.  They prefer crowding into a small room, limb after limb touching, and coiling themselves into each other’s bubble to calm the fire in their ears.  Just the five of them, sat around a semi-circle of smirks, with stupid jokes and mounds of sugary snacks and a film playing that they’ve seen a hundred times but never quite make it to the end credits.

This time, it’s Niall’s room with a lumpy bed and a river of blankets stolen off each other’s beds and several boxes of sugar-coated donuts _borrowed_ – Louis’ word choice, not theirs – from the staff pantry.  They fight over ordering up room service and kick their shoes beneath the bed on Liam’s insistence – _‘no trainers on the sheets, mates, that’s rude’_ – and pass around a bottle of orange soda like a freshly opened flask of whiskey.

There’s no warning signs when they crowd around him, lay across his feet, tug at leg of his sweats for his attention as their voices pound together better than any harmony they’ve produced in the studio.  Niall’s laughter floods his senses and Louis’ chewing cherry-flavored gum and Harry’s _right there_ , wedged next to him, with tangled curls and a few dozen stories about the New York skyline during a sunset and romantic getaways he’ll never take – except Zayn thinks he will, with Niall, when _courage_ is inked to his skin instead of these meaningless tattoos.

“Adam Sandler’s stuff is wicked,” Niall declares in the middle of commercials and a mouthful of donuts.

Zayn smirks, Harry’s free fingers in his hair, the bottle carefully pressed to his lips by Liam’s guiding hand.  He tips his head back, sputters on the sticky liquid that drips down his chin and across the tense muscles of his throat.  The back of his hand wipes away the excess while Liam apologizes from the sidelines, too far and too sweet to the left of him.

“I’d prefer watch some bad porn,” Louis giggles, dizzy and high off the sugar and carbonation and the lack of phone calls from back home.

“Busty blonds or sweet Asian nurses?” Harry inquires, shuffling bare feet across the sheets and Zayn’s ankles.

“A proper brunette with a nice arse and no gag reflex,” Louis offers up, tangled in clean linen by Zayn’s feet, an elbow pushing at Zayn’s calf.

“Did he just describe El?” Harry gags, choking on a breath while Niall’s chuckles spill like day old rain from rooftops.

“Think he just described _Leeymo_ , actually,” Niall puts in, barking out a sound that tickles up Zayn’s arms and legs.

There’s a soft whine, just to the left, and Zayn reaches out to drag the pad of his thumb over Liam’s prickly hair, the soft texture of his cheek – and he feels the heat beneath, the flush of blood like he’s blushing _hard_.  It drags up the corners of Zayn’s mouth and he sucks in a breath at not being able to watch it all.

_Temporary_ , he thinks, unsettled by the way he’s certain Oxford’s definition of the word is far more appealing than the reality of this.

“How would _you_ know if Payno hasn’t got a gag reflex?” Louis asks.

Harry blurts out a sound, something akin to a squeal while Niall’s laughter dies off like snow under the steam of a sun.

“He just looks it,” Niall says carelessly.  Liam groans before Niall adds, “That right, Li?  Could probably blow the hell out a chap, yeah?  Nice lips, proper use of the tongue and that thing you do with your throat when we’re practicing for a show.  Fair estimation, I’d say.”

Louis and Harry are a sharp symphony of gasps before they’re a thunder of snickers, the bed rocking as positions are changed and everyone shifts around him.  Harry’s a little further away, Niall’s somewhere further up on Harry’s side, Louis’ between his knees with his spine pressed to Zayn’s crotch, Liam’s a little closer –

No, a _lot_ closer.  He’s tangling free fingers in Zayn’s loose quiff and feeding him a donut, Zayn’s tongue accidentally catching on the tips of Liam’s fingers to lick away the chocolate.  He’s got a hip pressed to Zayn’s and _courage_ , Zayn thinks, is something only found in comic books.

He flinches at the pinch of his thigh – _Louis_ – and the press a smile to his shoulder – _Harry_ – and he wonders if they’re all watching him.  He wonders if they catch the shy smile he offers Liam or the way he _purposely_ licks the nail of Liam’s index finger on the next donut just for the shameless whine Liam breathes out.  There’s a chuckle against his teeth and Liam whispers angry curses at him before Zayn draws his attention away to some endless conversation Harry and Niall start up about dick sizes and reality versus purpose in porn like they’re critiquing films deserving of a British Academy Film Award.

Music surfs through the room, on the edge of the wave that is their chatter.  It’s all soft percussion, roundabout acoustics, mostly Ed Sheeran stuff because it’s a Harry Styles playlist and Zayn doesn’t mind.  He doesn’t care for the way Louis pushes his weight against him or Harry and Niall tangling around each other for sugar-drunk snogs between songs.  He tilts his temple onto Liam’s shoulder, picks up the start of a game of Angry Birds on Liam’s phone and burns up the nerves in his system with each of them tenting him in.

“The t’ird _Die Hard_ is the best, innit?” Niall suggests between the change from Bon Iver to something by a voice Zayn’s never heard but it’s wintry bright and hypnotic.

“Not even,” Louis laughs out while Zayn drags his fingers measurably across his scalp.  “Definitely the second.”

“The first, you idiots,” Liam challenges with a half-scoff.

Zayn’s nose scrunches with a tight laugh, his chest expanding for the loose bits of smoke still there from the cigarette he smoked, by himself, two hours ago.  He’s learned the exact amount of puffs to take before it burns down to the filter, the way to hold it as to not burn his fingers, the sound of singed paper when he lights it.

Everything is instinct now.

“Marathon boys?  I can order up brownies and hot cocoa,” Harry offers.  He is and always has been that best mate who brings you ice cream after a breakup and swaddles you in a thick duvet when you’re sick – attentive and precise.

Zayn chokes on a soft whimper, nudging his temple to Liam’s shoulder, free fingers digging into the muscle of his hip.  Liam nearly knocks him away but fingers curl under his chin, lift it, and he stutters on uneasy breaths for a moment.  He tugs back a little, shy and edgy, before his tongue flicks over his lips.

“Can we watch Batman, instead?  The original?” Zayn requests, pushing back loosened bits of his hair.  He tries to outline the shadows behind his eyelids into what he thinks is Liam’s face but he can’t.  His teeth worry his bottom lip alternatively.

“Fucking hell,” Louis groans and Zayn digs a knee into his chest in retaliation.

“You mean with Scarecrow and Rachel Dawes – “

Zayn makes a wounded sound, purposefully, before grinning.  They agreed, after long talks in the shadows and silent laughter that they’d never speak of the original Rachel Dawes and the pointless placement of her in the film for a romantic interest.

“No,” Zayn mutters, his tongue licking at his teeth while they work against his lip.  “Burton’s version, mate.”

His fingers move apprehensively up Liam’s face, the sting of his early stubble present, to trace out his expression.  He feels the wrinkles in his nose, the stretch of his lips into a smirk, the ripples around his eyes when they scrunch.  He licks out his own smile, against sharp teeth, before exhaling softly.

“It’s three to two here.  We can’t be outvoted,” Niall demands but it’s a foolish attempt.

Harry shoves at Zayn’s side and the pull of gravity sends him knocking into Liam before Harry chuckles out, “I think we lose by default, bro.  Zayn’s disability gets an extra vote.”

“And Liam’s lack of a gag reflex wins over everything,” Louis puts in for the fuck of it, drawing out wild, animalistic laughter that burns Liam’s cheeks into a shade Zayn wants to paint against a blank canvas but he doesn’t see it.

Instead, he giggles into Liam’s shoulder and finds his bearings when Liam shrugs away, smacking Zayn’s cheek playfully.

It’s not that he hasn’t memorized the film from the starting thrum of the orchestral introduction all the way to the Joker’s laugh at the end, but it’s been years since he viewed it even though it’s been sitting in Liam’s collection of superhero DVD’s on the last tour, this one too.  His ears prick up at the sounds, the dialogue, the little pieces of background noise he missed the first thirty times he’s watched it.

Liam’s arm sits heavy around his shoulders, his head to a slow rising chest while Niall and Harry giggle next to them.  Louis’ snoring at his feet and there’s too many boys on this bed to fit quite right but they don’t move.  They simply create a tunnel of noise around him and a field of scents he knows too well now, like Harry’s cologne and Niall’s body spray and Liam’s bag of red vines that he feeds Zayn between scenes and Michael Keaton’s textured voice – which is nothing like Christian Bale’s and he appreciates that on levels he can’t quite express.

He smiles at the cheesy lines and Vicki Vale’s horrible dialogue, teeth clipping his bottom lip whenever the Joker is on screen.  It mixes with the sweet lull of Liam’s breathing beneath him, Harry’s soft instructions to Niall on how to cheat on Candy Crush on some fake Facebook account they created a year ago.  He’s a bit defeated by exhaustion and desperate for _something_ , his daft reasoning behind snuffling closer to Liam on the sheets and between the thick material of a blanket separating them.  Fingers tighten around his shoulder, a phantom smile pressed to his hairline that he anchors onto.

_At peace_ , he thinks, a saying he hasn’t latched onto since all of this started with an audition and a McDonald’s back in England.  It feels funny on his tongue, repeated over and over quietly until his senses collapse.  His eyes blink shut to the explosions and chaos, his nose dragging over Liam’s chest and he falls asleep exactly five seconds after Liam’s spare arm curves around him, drawing him into the fold.

 

/*/

 

Early mornings, he thinks, seem to be the worst now.  Maybe it’s because he can feel the sun through thick curtains, a lampshade of warmth and cruel reality.  He muses it’s because he can’t look upon it as it streaks the sky a pretty gold, possibly a fiery pink, the loud roll of orange like Harry’s stupid beanies and Niall’s footie kit that he wears sometimes before a pickup game.

Maybe because, when he was a much younger teenager, it was the only time he had to himself in a house filled with three very curious sisters who’d trample into his nook of a room before breakfast for a chat or just to trouble him.  He finds it comical, now, that they always managed to burst in five minutes after a desperate wank with crumpled tissues still between his Power Rangers sheets and a half-opened magazine kicked beneath his bed – he’d taken to cheap pictures of lingerie models back then rather than those expensive, glossy pages Ant and Danny jerked off to.  He’d still be coming down from his blissful high with half-sticky fingers, a throbbing semi in his boxers and his toes curling and uncurling reflexively to the throb his body still echoed.

It’s probably why, now, he hates mornings when he can’t see.  He can feel everything – the cold from a night of stars in October, the raised goosebumps from the pieces of skin not clothed by the blanket, the stiff mattress beneath him, the familiar body behind him, the ache between his thighs with his cock straining against soft material and leaking helplessly just beneath his navel.

When he shifts between the sheets, the glow of cold hotel air streams down over the tip of his cock that’s peeking out of the waistband of his briefs.  He strains the noise in his throat until it’s choked, whimpering into his pillow.  He feels down the rumpled shirt across his chest, skimming the planes of his stomach and the thin trail of hair just below his navel to outline his cock, squeezing a little desperately.

“Fuck,” he mutters under a yawn, fidgeting quietly because waking Liam with a semi and a fumbling hand doesn’t seem appropriate.

He sighs, squeezing his eyes tighter until little glittered speckles of ivory dance into the black.  His eyelashes flutter over his cheeks, thick and heavy, and his teeth grip his bottom lip when his thumb slips over the slit.  It comes back sticky with a string of precome connecting his finger to his cock.

His hips roll and he shudders because he feels like some horny thirteen year old lad who’s never wanked before but it’s been _weeks_.  Weeks without sight, weeks without really knowing the features of his body, weeks since he’s slathered his hand in lotion and properly yanked on his cock for relief.

The pressure streams up his spine and his lips part for a quiet, unintended moan when his palm curves down the underside of his cock.  He pushes the sound into the thickness of his pillow and flops onto his stomach, grinding down into the mattress once before he gives up.  He doesn’t really know the way to the bathroom yet, doesn’t know the safest places to sit while doing this or where to wipe his hand afterwards or how to hide the blush in his cheeks if Liam catches him wanking so he stifles breaths into the sheets instead, concentrating on the static of the television and the promise he made to call his mum today and the plate of eggs and toast he knows Harry will bring him in a few.

His teeth work his bottom lip raw, long fingers curling into the sheets as he huffs on oxygen that burns his lungs.  His hips draw back, the sticky precome keeping his cock attached to the skin beneath his belly.  He shakes his head, or tries to against the pillow, and collapses once more.  He refocuses his senses for a brief second on the white noise in his ears, barely noticing the wriggle of a body behind him, the hand that curves around his hip to turn him on his side again.

Zayn stutters on an inhale when a nose is nuzzled to the nape of his neck, a heavy arm thrown across his chest, cold feet brushing against his own.

“M’tired,” Liam mumbles with hot breath into Zayn’s hair, fingers scratching up the Green Lantern symbol on Zayn’s shirt.  “Sleep, mate.  You like sleep.”

Zayn swallows a moan at Liam’s warmth, the way his hand travels just low enough that his thumb outlines Zayn’s navel.  He exhales over a giggle, absently pushing back into Liam, feeling the smooth definition of muscle and tan skin.  He tips his head back onto Liam’s shoulder, arches his spine and he feels shameful at the way he wants more.

_More._

Fuck, he wants so much more than legs tangling between linen and lips in the jut between shoulder and neck and a hand stilled just above his cock.

He flinches when Liam’s fingers brush unconsciously over the head of his cock through the fabric and they both freeze.  He tenses, almost scrambles away and Liam breathes heavily onto his neck, little hiccupped gasps like their reality suffocates them.

Zayn chokes on a whine, tries to swivel his hips away but then those fingers move again, trickle over the cloth, draw small circles with dull nails over the slit.

“’m sorry,” Zayn whimpers, a little past desperate when he pushes up into the touch because it’s been too long.  He just needs touch.

“For what,” Liam whispers, spare fingers combing through Zayn’s hair, pushing it back.  Lips catch on his ear, a shifty sort of smile that Zayn barely knows but recognizes.  “We all get ‘em, babe.  ‘s called morning wood, yeah?”

Zayn suffocates on a moan when those fingers curve around the shaft, Liam’s thumb running the isolated thickness of the vein.  He snorts because it’s amusing – _or manic_ – to have his best mate’s hand on his twitching cock, fondling him through his pants while in some foreign hotel bed in a city they’ve seen enough times except he can’t see a thing.

“It’s just – _fuck_ ,” Zayn moans, tipping his head further back to expose his throat, to relinquish a bit of control.  “It’s been awhile, Li.  Like, I can’t do it properly without seeing and how sick is _that_?  A lad can’t wank off even though he’s been doing it for years?  Just because I can’t see and, fuck, that’s tragic, man.  Who gets off on seeing their hand on their dick when all you need is to be able to touch it?”

Liam laughs into his ear, the sound a bit smug but his fingers move along a different path.  They sketch up the taut draw of Zayn’s stomach muscles, sweep over the heart tattoo, down across the bone of his hip before tangling in the waistband.  He’s half-past needy, a _quiet ‘yes’_ on his lips because Liam Payne is everything written into the definition of cautious.

Zayn tilts his hips off the bed, a plea, begging.  He wrestles back against Liam, stretches his body long before Liam giggles into his shoulder.

“I could,” Liam starts, chapped lips meeting the side of Zayn’s neck.  “For you, I mean.  As a favor.  Just a – I dunno, mate.  Just a way to help you relax, I suppose.”

Zayn shudders out a laugh because this is stupid.  It’s chaotic and mad and he shouldn’t even bother.  There are worse things in life besides having a hard-on in bed with your best mate – like not being able to see or still succumbing to nightmares about an accident that’s long past or being crowded in by anxiety whenever he’s alone, without one of them.

“I wouldn’t mind,” Zayn replies, shameless for half a second before the blush stings his cheeks and he tenses up.

“Yeah,” Liam huffs out, dragging his lips over Zayn’s neck, fingers still asking permission against the waistband of Zayn’s briefs.  “I could, mate.  Just ‘cause you need it.  Just because – “

“ _Leeyum_ ,” Zayn whines pathetically, nudging back.  He swallows a gasp at the stiffness pushing into the dip of his spine, the thick, full feeling of Liam’s cock right there.  It spins dizzily in his mind and his cock spits out another thick drop of precome at the thought before he’s shivering under the weight of Liam’s arm.

They’re clumsy and fumbling with Liam’s hands pulling down Zayn’s briefs, leaving them tangled around his ankles with the sheets and blankets pushed back.  The cold breath of morning air rushes over his skin, raising his flesh like the lift of a twilight sky’s stars.  His fingers twist into the sheets, his thighs spreading with his cock sitting heavy on his stomach.  It arches and curves, his throat dry, his tongue dense in his mouth.

He’s distracted by trembling lips moving up his neck when Liam settles next to him again, their hips touching and he’s _gone_ the moment a soft palm drags up his cock from root to tip.  Calloused fingers are strong, wet with saliva – because neither one of them wants to admit they carry a bottle of lube with them on tour for moments alone in an empty hotel room or quick stop-offs in the tour bus bathroom – and they coil around him, lift his cock from the stretch of his belly.

“Not quite sure what you like, mate,” Liam offers up between Zayn’s wheezing breaths, his nose nudging against Zayn’s cheek.  His lips carry a pretty tune to Zayn’s jaw, teeth biting kindly like a warning.  “Some chaps like it quick and fast.  Heard some like it slow, teasing.  Once spent _an hour_ wanking off in my bed back home, getting close and then stopping to grab me balls, squeezing up – “

Zayn releases a broken sound, shaking against posh linen and plush pillows.  His knee knocks against Liam’s and he ignores the sting of Liam’s teeth on his shoulder to turn his head just enough to press his nose to Liam’s forehead.

“Sorry,” Liam whispers, losing some of that bravado, an unarmed embarrassment in his tone.  “Sometimes I talk a bit dirty in bed.  It’s stupid.  I’ve only ever gotten one bird off with it.”

“The rest were idiots,” Zayn laughs out, hips instinctively snapping upward when Liam starts a slow stroke over his cock.  His fingers pry from the sheets, wrap tightly around Liam’s tense forearm to guide his movements.  “I don’t mind, though.  The talking.”

His cheeks are lit with a fever, his throat swallowing down little moans when Liam grins against his shoulder.  Fingers tighten around the base, a thumb pushing just beneath the crown.  He’s slick with Liam’s saliva and his own precome, fat drops still leaking out each time Liam twists his wrist.

“I don’t mind a good blowjob,” Liam mutters, his smile so affectionate when pressed to the line of Zayn’s throat.  His chest is naked, up against Zayn’s arm and Zayn remembers Liam yanking out of the material in the middle of the night, tossing it somewhere in the room before cuddling just a tiny bit closer to Zayn because he thought Zayn was still asleep –

And Zayn will never tell him, not unless he has to, about how he laid there for an hour listening to Liam sing himself softly back to sleep or the way the curve of Liam’s fingers on his hip left his chest flushed and his body calm beneath the storm outside.  He won’t tell him how he loved Liam’s soft breathing in his ear or the way he nudged back just so Liam would wound his arm around Zayn’s body for protection.

“But I like going down on someone,” Liam continues, a choked giggle spilling from his lips.  It sounds like practiced harmonies in the back of a van or the wind on an isolated beach.  The hand around him squeezes a little tighter around the shaft, loosens around the head like a tease.

Zayn hums, arching off the bed, so desperate for more.  It burns off his tongue and he stills like he didn’t mean it but Liam grins into his neck and strokes a bit faster until Zayn’s settled into the mattress again.

“I like to see what I can do to someone with my mouth,” Liam adds, synching his breathing with Zayn’s – heavy, fast, uneven.  “I don’t think I’m a good fuck – “

“Fuck off,” Zayn gasps, twisting his hips and fucking into Liam’s hand.  Those fingers go slack, permit Zayn to slide through them like a loose vice.  Like the mouth of a few girls he’s done this to.  Like that one lad in Manchester with the pretty lips, soft tongue, when he was too young to know better and too high off of killer weed provided by Danny to care.

Liam smirks against his cheek, leaves behind wet kisses that soothe Zayn’s bones.  “I’ve never been told so.”

Zayn’s mouth twitches into a small frown, fingers gripping at Liam’s forearm, leaving behind bruises he won’t view but will thumb at as a reminder.

“You’ve been with shit people, Leeymo, and you know it.  People who don’t love you for you or don’t give a shit about your feelings, mate,” Zayn tells him, a little rough because his body is straining for Liam to move again.  There’s a thumb at his hip and lips brushing lightly over his throat and this seems so casual – Liam holding him, Zayn fucking into his hand, their breaths shared rather than divided into two bodies.

“Guess I don’t know any better.”

“Reckon you don’t,” Zayn spits out, swiveling his hips before falling back.  His teeth work against the flesh of his lip and Liam’s idle, lazy strokes draw him closer before the feeling fades off.  “You’re so special – “

“Are we really having this discussion _now_?  With my hand on your dick and, c’mon Zayn, this isn’t about me,” Liam giggles, timing the speed of his hand with the rise and fall of Zayn’s chest.

_It is_ , he thinks but holds onto the words like his lungs cling to oxygen.  He kicks his feet at the sheets instead, curls his fingers into nothing, flutters his eyelashes on his cheeks with innocent charm he adapted from Harry long ago.

“I’m real close, mate,” Zayn mumbles, teeth still hugging his lip.  He fucks into Liam’s hand three times, falling back.  “Sorry, ‘m not usually this quick or anything.  Like that matters.”

“It does,” Liam mumbles into the side of his neck, dragging lips up to a jaw stained with scruff.  “Only ‘cause we’re lads and all.  None of us want to be, you know, quick or anything.  Looks pretty sad.”

“Shut it,” Zayn laughs out and that’s it, isn’t it?

He loves this with Liam, permits himself to enjoy it because everything with Liam is so _natural_.  It’s not forced or plotted out or put upon.  It’s like Liam teaching him footie or Zayn explaining the brilliance of Doctor Doom or anything else they’ve ever done.  They don’t need instructions or validation.  They just need – they don’t _need_ either.

They _want_ moments like this.

Just the two of them and that’s the brilliant part.

“So close,” he hisses over the backdrop of a slick hand smacking against flesh, the cheap sounds of porn he’s heard a dozen times or made in bed with some keening girl who thought shit like this was sexy.  Some bird who thought whining and panting and shaking through a dry orgasm was attractive.

But it’s different with Liam because the sounds are _real_ and his body trembles unexpectedly for Liam and he aches in a varied sort of way that he’s never before.

Liam’s hand slicks quicker against him until the bottom of his spine arches artistically, his toes digging into the sheets.  He swallows a whine – a cheap, desperate noise that he adores because it’s real and for Liam – before burying fingers into the waistband of Liam’s joggers, tugging like he wants them off –

Like he’s thought about Liam pushing him down into this bed, stripping off clothes and sheets, sliding into him and fucking the breath of out him.  Shagging the words from his lips.  Screwing away the fear and the nerves and making everything beneath his skin alive.

Lips pepper over his neck, down onto his collar and he’s so close.  He’s right there, almost, on the edge when Liam’s hand slows down.  He shakes out a moan, shaking his head against the pillow.  His thighs twitch and tremble and his belly tightens up when Liam’s fingers drift off his skin.

“Liam,” he hums unconsciously, the heat of that warm body peeling away.  He feels lost, abandoned in a cold hotel room with sweat slick on his forehead and the tip of his throat, his teeth grinding on his lip.

It’s an empty feeling that lasts seconds before lips press over his stomach, a tongue licking the outline of his navel.  It’s a thin veil of curiosity until it hits him – Liam’s thumbing the shaft and his tongue is licking around the head and he shifts against the bed because uncertainty sends him into high altitude.

Liam’s great at this – like he’s great at holding a tune in his falsetto and brilliant at football and deliberately genius at making the others feel _normal_.  His lips tighten around Zayn’s cock, his tongue flicks along the underside, and he lets the soft catch of his teeth around the head feel like a sedative rather than a mistake.  He swallows around Zayn, out of instinct, and Zayn’s chest bursts with neon rapture.

“Sweet,” Liam whispers when he pulls off with an obscene sound that Zayn catalogues.  The pulse of his fingers up Zayn’s hips is delicate, just a breeze of a touch.  Zayn finds it hard to adjust but his hips crawl after the sensation until Liam tries to smile around him when he takes Zayn back in.

“ _Leeyum_ ,” he gasps, dragging out the letters until they connect the pinprick dots behind his eyes.

He associates the upward twitch of his lips into a smile, the curl of his fingers against the bed, the division of his thighs to make room for Liam’s broad shoulders, the push against his spine with this sort of adrenaline he only ever gets when on stage or in the swarm of adoring fans.  His brain is low on oxygen and Liam baits him into fumbling his hips upward into the slick heat before he falls from grace.  It saturates him like the dribble of saliva from the corners of Liam’s mouth that slides down the inside of his thighs.

And then Liam’s forehead is pressed to the stretch of stomach muscles with his nose tickled by unkempt, wiry hairs.  He swallows around Zayn in a way that’s not amateurish but gentle – in ways _no one_ ever is while giving head.  A moan vibrates over his shaft, fingers digging into Zayn’s thighs and Zayn is left crippled through his next few breaths.

His voice cracks to release a warning but Liam draws back just enough for the head to sit on the center of his tongue, the tip tickling out ecstasy before Zayn shivers over sheets.  He whimpers instead of growling and pushes his head back into the pillow while his hips fuck come across Liam’s tongue.  It’s careless, the way he can’t quite keep control of his limbs and the way he can’t quite remember anything feeling as great as this but the echo of slick sounds in his ears as he loses himself in Liam’s mouth embeds itself in his mind next to the lyrics to ‘One Thing’ and the first lines of his favorite novel.

Liam arranges him on the bed afterwards because he’s still panting and his body is too lax to attempt movement.  Their feet brush beneath the sheets again, his spine to Liam’s chest with two arms circling his waist and ribs.  He blows hot air against an unused pillow, gripping the sheets like he’s still trying to hold on, while Liam’s slick lips skim the nape of his neck.

“Don’t say thank you or tell me I gave a good go at it,” Liam teases, tightening his fingers across Zayn’s stomach.  “Just helping out a mate, I reckon.”

Zayn blinks at the words, draws lazy symbols over the back of Liam’s hand.  “Okay,” he whispers but it feels like _‘is that all it was’_ instead of _‘I wanted it so bad, Liam, can we do it again_.’

“It’s half-past seven, Zayner.  We can sleep a bit longer before Louis barges in on us,” Liam suggests, pressing his nose into Zayn’s hair.  His arms constrict and his legs shift between Zayn’s until they’re a loose knot around each other.

Zayn nods until the swirls of charcoal and silver turn an ominous ink black and his high is forgotten.

Until he’s thankful he can’t see how calm and unaffected Liam is by the thump of Zayn’s heart or the way he’s curling in on himself rather than trying to drown in Liam’s embrace.

 

/*/

 

Their first show back as a group is an acoustic one at the heart of the city, in some small old unused theatre that smells dusty and feels perfect.  They don’t sell tickets, rather have a Twitter giveaway for the fans and it’s an intimate setting like those first few radio gigs they did for their first album.  It’s just a large stage with a few stools, a handful of microphone stands, and Niall’s favorite Fender.  Just some casual affair with one of Niall’s snapbacks turned backwards on his head, one of Liam’s loose button ups that hides the Captain America shirt Harry bought him in the middle of Times Square with Nike’s and saggy joggers on his hips.

There’s press interviews backstage that he’s not escorted to on the suggestion of their new PR rep and he waits in a near-empty dressing room that’s cramped, unbecoming of _‘pop royalty’_ – and he hates that term, the way it’s thrown around because, really, they’re just five lads who don’t know what to do with this sort of fame – with the thrum of Miguel in his ears and the buzz of dopamine just behind his lungs.

He’s startled by the screams when Harry leads him onstage, stuttering on his own footsteps because this feels like that first time, as an actual band, on the X-Factor stage.  It feels like he doesn’t deserve any of this, not in the least.  He chews at his lip, his name the loudest over their lips, and tries to hide the blush under the thick spotlights overhead.  His shoulders tense until he’s uncomfortable on the wooden stool, Harry’s fingers squeezing around his wrist to calm the jumbled expression he keeps making.

He sips cherry Gatorade while Niall tunes up and Louis runs through introductions, useless chatter to distract the audience from Zayn’s fidgeting.  His voice works against his throat for warm-ups with Harry, fingers coiling around the mic for an anchor, for a sense of gravity.  Liam’s joined the fray of discussion and he almost misses his cue until Niall nudges his foot and he lifts his chin for a wobbly smile, a little wave because he’s not sure how full the theatre is or where everyone is sitting.

“That’s our Malik,” Louis beams, settling an arm around Zayn’s stiff shoulders, squeezing like a reminder.  “He can’t see you lot but, let me tell you Zaynie, this crowd loves you.  They’ve got posters and everything.”

Zayn tips his head into Louis’ shoulder, blotting the blush at the coos and ravenous screams, trying not to shake.  The weight on his heart is so reminiscent of early days, when they didn’t know each other’s voices and Harry shouldered most of the solos, and he laughs at the way Louis teases him.

“Quite the favorite, aren’t you?” Harry chimes in.

“Always has been,” Liam adds, the smile in his voice not forgotten on Zayn.  He’s not close, not like the others, but Zayn can map out half of the stage to pinpoint where he’s sitting.  He lets out a shaky breath and pretends the pull on his spine to shift around toward Liam is false.

The band and Niall start up the first song and he leans over his stool with hands on his knees, shoulders slumped, and his smile lit up for the crowd.  He does fine for the first couple of songs, follows everyone else’s lead, noting the changes in key for the rhythm of the guitars.  He remembers all of his lines, adds inflection to his voice just to show-off – and pretends not to hear Louis’ groans like _‘you fucker, you’re incredible’_ – and stumbles through grins when the others compliment him.

The sound in the theatre is brilliant, if not amplified.  It carries all of their screaming, their adoration, their tears until he can’t hear the notes or the instruments.  He can’t focus halfway through ‘Little Things,’ missing a few lyrics and notes.  His voice goes shaky through ‘Changed My Mind,’ even when Harry pinches his thigh to corral the pull of his throat.  Everything gets louder, louder and he’s straining all the way through ‘More Than This,’ even if Louis’ trying to cover it up and Niall broadens his voice and Harry nudges his hip like _‘stop, we’ve got you.’_ But he doesn’t until his voice gives out, his chin dropping, the expected sting of dewy tears against his eyes.  He can’t see their faces, their disappointment but it vibrates off the front row, travels like high velocity until he sniffs and lowers his mic.

He falters, wringing his hands together in his lap until a familiar voice takes over the parts he hadn’t finished.  An arm slides around his shoulders, not Harry’s this time or Louis’.  It squeezes around him gently like a blanket wrapped around your shivering body.  He can smell Liam – _fresh air, the coast in the spring_ – and the others joke through the words Liam forgets.

Soft, velvet lips brush over his temple, push back the snapback some.  They whisper things he doesn’t hear, ease him until his shoulders relax and his mouth stops tilting downward.

The audience clucks and applauds and Zayn can’t hear the sound when Liam’s fingers drift up the back of his neck into a thick patch of hair.

“Brilliant boys,” Harry jokes once the music stops but Liam’s lips keep moving, repeating the last lines over and over.

“I told you everyone here loved you, mate,” Louis adds while Niall laughs into his microphone to divert the audience’s attention from the way Liam’s coiling arms around Zayn’s neck, dragging his chin up Zayn’s forehead with a giggle.  “Even the Payno can’t get enough of you.”

Zayn smiles into Liam’s collar, a shaky hand rubbing the small of his back.  He tries to grip his lungs around the smoky air while Liam shields him from everything except the clatter of his heart in his ears.

It’s Paul who takes him backstage midway through their next set, shoves a water bottle at him and a friendly pat to Zayn’s shoulder for the words his lips can’t speak.  He knows what Paul’s intending – a break from the rush, a chance to breathe, a moment to gather himself when it’s Harry or Niall who usually panics like this.  They’re the ones that forget breathing techniques and get swallowed by the crowd and let the phobia ink over their skin.

Not Zayn.

He swallows around the water until his throat stops trembling, his fingers squeezing reflexively around the plastic until it bends and crunches.  There’s still a typhoon of sound from the stage, through the thick curtain dividing them, and the other four laugh their way through song after song.  They take a piss at each other through ‘Live While You’re Young,’ each of them filling in his parts but their voices aren’t as strong, he can tell.

Another set of hands, not belonging to Paul, cuff his collar and adjust his snapback before he’s hauled into a corner that drapes cold shadows over his face.  His hands search upward immediately because sudden movements and stealth actions do more than take him by surprise – they _terrify_ him.  His nose twitches at vanilla bean, the corners of his mouth lifting.  A hand cups the back of his neck, dragging him a little closer even though his shoulder blades are pinned to the angle of a wall and his feet are bracketed by Liam’s.  He smiles and sways and the spare hand on the small of his back keeps tracing little half-notes on his spine like a pencil etching out the melody of his heart on a stanza.

“Are you okay?” Liam asks, his voice still on the rougher side of a wrong note.

Zayn tucks his chin a little, blinking, separating the tears from his lashes.

“Yes,” he lies and there’s an automatic sigh, from Liam’s lips, that forces out an admission, “No.”

“S’okay,” Liam whispers back, the tips of his last fingers outlining the silver fern’s tail.  “We didn’t want to pressure you.”

“No pressure,” Zayn says quickly.  His fingers trace the dimples in Liam’s smile, the rise of his cheeks, each little line that wrinkles and sets into place when Liam’s smiling dopily.  The fingers at his back slide over nonexistent hollows, dip a little lower.

“’m scared, man,” he heaves out, his body trembling because those damn tears set a liquid fire between his lengthy eyelashes.  “It’s not coming back, Liam, I know it.  ‘m not gonna see, ever.  And you lot will have to ditch me and I can’t do this alone – “

Liam makes a sound, gruff and unrelenting.  His fingers pinch at the rear of Zayn’s neck, their foreheads knocking.  His breath stays even and it startles his defenses, Zayn’s thumbs stroking over barely-there scruff.

“I will make this better, I promise,” Liam mutters, the edge of his nose brushing over Zayn’s.  It’s not emasculating or anything of that sort, but it’s so much more intimate than they’ve ever been.  It’s – if he had the words, he’d utter them from the top of his lungs.

“Things will be okay, mate, I guarantee it.”

“Liam,” he sighs, trying to swallow the pride and the happiness lifted in his voice but he just _can’t_.  Not with Liam crowding him further into the corner, not with a hand on his hip and another on his chest just to feel the rapid pace of his heart, so he swallows and adds, “You can’t guarantee something like this.”

“I can,” Liam counters, swaying their bodies, losing themselves in half of ‘Moments’ and half of something a little sweeter, still unwritten.  “I’m _Liam goddamn Payne_ , right?”

Zayn snorts, shoves back against firm muscle but he refuses to let Liam stumble away.  He floats a few unnerved fingers across pliant, chapped lips until his heart quickens and the darkness behind his lids is not as heavy as the stir in his stomach.

Something cheeky moves across Liam’s mouth, turns sticky and sweet when Zayn patterns his breathing after Liam’s.  It’s every bit of calm that Harry practices during yoga, euphoric like Louis is after a good spliff.

“I’ll make it better,” Liam repeats, softer, purposeful.

Zayn doesn’t nod, can’t when they’re this close but he quirks his lips while Liam tangles a hand in his hair, beneath the snapback.  He tries, futilely, to relax and scan his fingers over Liam’s face, his bristly hair, the corners of a soft, soft cheek before angling his head.

Their first kiss, his first real kiss in a year, is clumsy.  He thinks of art pieces he’s seen in magazines and galleries across the globe and he can’t quite get the comparison when his lips slip just left of center and Liam kisses the corner of his mouth and they’re quite terrible at this.  Their noses bump and Liam snorts while Zayn sighs restlessly but fingers secure his chin in an awful play on coyness.

“Not quite,” Liam giggles, lips brushing Zayn’s like wild harmonies in the depth of the woods.  There’s a buzz just beneath his skin before calloused fingers lift and set his jaw into place.

“Teach me,” Zayn half-pleads, sucking in a shallow breath of air that barely touches his lungs before the snapback is knocked off his head and Liam buries his lips to Zayn’s.

The repeat is the perfect juncture between verb and adjective: _amazing_.  He replays it on a loop, even as their mouths move in a pattern he’s unaccustomed to.  His lips give permission with a soft whine, parting for a sugary tongue that Liam uses like a solution.  His fingers tangle in the collar of Liam’s shirt, the pinprick dots behind his eyes are connecting like something astronomical.  He loses his breath and tries to map out coordinates to his heart against Liam’s chest but everything is paralyzing when Liam brushes their lips together in a slow, slow rhythm that he’ll never understand but craves.

It’s silly how these little things – and yes, it’s _terrible_ how that song makes him want to laugh or die, whichever is more convenient – like the soft texture of Liam’s palm and his full bottom lip and the scrape of his teeth and the twisting muscles in his forearms marry themselves to all of the pieces in artwork Zayn loves to admire.  He’s knocked off his axis, dissolving in the way Liam kisses like this is the first and last thing on his mind.  Liam’s always been a bit of a perfectionist, Zayn too, but this kiss is nothing like that.

It’s a little desperate and their lips stumble every other breath but neither one of them complains.

Paul clears his throat a few meters away and blush splatters his cheeks.  He’s a little jealous that the entire backstage crew probably sees the flush of Liam’s cheeks or that awful pink color at the top of his ears or the way he’s stuttering through a speech about proper take-care methods.

“You’re an idiot, Payne,” Paul huffs out but Zayn can hear the smile in his voice.

“But that was quite the sight,” Louis calls, a little further back and Niall wolf whistles like there’s nothing more to say.

Zayn buries his shame in Liam’s shoulder, bites gently at the muscle until Liam reacts warmly, shuffling Zayn out of the corner and shoving him toward Harry.  His fingers still tangle in the tail of Zayn’s shirt and he never gets too far away when they lead him toward the dressing room, but the touches are a bit more discreet still, something Zayn hates but lives with –

And when everyone is distracted and Liam has him wedged into a corner of the couch with a hand in Zayn’s lap and his attention on Louis’ running commentary from the show, Zayn runs his tongue over the edge of his lips to remember the flavor of Gatorade Liam drank and the softness of his mouth.

 

/*/

 

Zayn has always thought Louis was a well-lit star three seconds from supernova.

He thinks, belatedly, it’s why he gravitates to Louis so easily.  It’s a natural pull like sweet smoke from a joint.  It’s a constant burn that bites at his skin but he doesn’t turn away.  Louis is that equation that’s never really solved – just pondered upon until it seems insolvable.

It’s the reason Zayn lets him drag them both into the hallway on their hotel floor, just to slide down the walls and spread out across the carpet.  They occupy opposite walls, stretched out toward each other like little moons in orbit.  Their bare feet brush over the rough carpet, voices reaching above the collision of staff and security just for each other.

Louis is sipping liberally from a stolen bottle of citrus vodka, nicked from one of the guard’s stash, while Zayn drinks a cup of organic tea from the _Harry Styles Collection_ – a name they all agreed upon because Harry is, if anything, a world-class specimen.  They trade off stories about days past – sitting in the back of the van, singing loudly to the Pretenders even though they didn’t know half the words or pranking Niall daily because, well, he was the easiest to piss off without repercussions.

“That poor sod, Hazza,” Louis sighs, the words a little slurred.  “He’s in love, you know.  Poor fuck doesn’t know what he’s in for.”

Zayn’s used to this, the way Louis devours his feelings in alcohol instead of crumpling into one of their beds like he did years ago, just for a chat.  He thinks this suits Louis better – long talks over whatever off brand bottle he can find, tangling around them later with his heart stitched and pressed into his sleeve while drooling on their shoulders.

“It’s Niall,” Zayn teases, wiggling his toes against the underside of Louis’ foot.  Louis jerks away with a tight laugh, groaning when his head thuds against the wall.  “It’s like falling in love with a pup.”

“Yeah, an Irish puppy,” Louis says nonsensically, hiccupping out a laugh.  Zayn shakes his head against the wall, pushes Harry’s stolen Ray Bans up his nose before sipping slowly at still hot tea.

“You’re an idiot.”

“Yeah, well,” Louis sighs and Zayn wants to imagine the blue of his eyes like sapphire stones or the little lift of his shoulders or his probably rumpled Rolling Stones shirt.  “It’s love, man.  What can we do about it?”

Zayn lifts his eyebrows, catching the corner of his lip with sharp teeth.  “That bad, yeah?”

Louis cackles, brushing liberal toes over the arch of Zayn’s foot.  “She said it first, man.  Completely gutted when I waited a whole three phone calls later to say it back.  Wasn’t sure, you know?  Sort of like you and – “

“Not like that,” Zayn says immediately because any reference to Rebecca or even Geneva feels so minute.

“ – like you and Liam,” Louis finishes and there’s a pause between them, the divide so wide now that Zayn gasps while Louis swallows an odd sound.

“Like me and,” Zayn stops, his tongue too heavy to finish.  He drags his knuckles over his jaw and licks at his tea rather than drinking it, waits until the lateral spin of his brain slows.

Louis chuckles, a burst of chaotic sound that Zayn will forever associate with him.  The kind that follows some of their best pranks or the time they spray painted half of a brick wall in California or sitting on the roof top of some building just for the fuck of it all.

“’s not like that,” Zayn says under his breath, trying to believe his own words.

Louis’ toes nudge at his foot, press in sharply before he groans.  There’s a thump – Louis’ head and the wall, no doubt – before knees scratch against the carpet and Louis settles next to Zayn’s side, half-on and lazy.

There’s a quiet stretch of silence before a wet smack – Louis’ lips and the bottle, probably – filters through Zayn’s ears.  He can smell the vodka and the rich lemony drift and he drags dull nails up the skintight jeans on Louis’ legs.  A set of fingers tangles into his hair, pushes the fringe off his forehead and he tapers off into a seaside comfort with Louis next to him.

“That bloke has been in love with you since the _second day_ you were at the bungalow and you’re an idiot for not realizing it,” Louis remarks and he’s serious.  His limbs tighten, his thighs sturdy while pressed to Zayn’s, his fingers more severe in their drag.

Zayn swallows a sound that Louis almost mimics, the dust in the air a thick smoke where Zayn’s lungs fill out.

“How could you not notice?” Louis blurts out.

“How could you lot not tell me?” Zayn argues back, drawing away but not far enough.

Louis’ fingers tug on the ends of his hair, playful rather than vicious, and Zayn coils back to his side with his chin on Louis’ shoulder.

“He doesn’t love me,” Zayn whispers, no, _whimpers_ because it’s been crawling up his skin for weeks now.  “We’re mates, Lou.  He has my back and I’ll always have his.”

“You daft little prick,” Louis sighs but there’s a lopsided grin in his voice that Zayn’s always loved – day three of singing the same songs over and over until their lungs gave out.  “You didn’t know you were in love with him too, did you?”

Zayn tips his chin up defiantly, nudging his knuckles to the inside of Louis’ arm, kicking aimlessly until he hits a foot.

“It’s not like that, mate, I swear.”

“Fucking bullshit,” Louis laughs out, the sound just a whistle of wind before fingers grip around the section of his arm where the chord wraps around in sharp, dark ink.  The squeeze is hard, will probably leave bruises, but it draws up Zayn’s attention, the sunglasses sliding down his nose as he tries to focus on the area he thinks Louis’ face is.

“You really didn’t know?” Louis asks, his voice grave and Zayn’s heart speeds up from the pinch of fingers into his skin alone.

His bites at his lower lip, dropping his chin.  “Of course not.  Why would I?  When I first saw him,” Zayn pauses, his lungs flammable by the irony alone.  He swallows the cascade before adding, “He’s always just been my mate, until he wasn’t.  I sorted out the Haz and Niall thing because it’s a comfort mechanism, right?  But Li is just – man, ‘s not cool to fall in love with your best mate.”

Louis clears his throat, the way he does before an important speech because, every few months, Louis remembers he’s the oldest, the unexpected leader, the calm after the storm.

“The thing is, my friend, we’re all going to stumble and fall someday.  We’re all gonna fall in love unexpectedly one day.  Whether you want to or not, it’s gonna happen,” Louis explains with a thumb stroking the ‘Z’ before fingers twist against Zayn’s forearm.  “And who cares if we miss the fact that it was love at first sight or not?  Maybe we don’t fall in love with our eyes – just by touch because, little do you know Zayn Malik, you didn’t fall in love with that chap when you saw him.  You fell in love when he first touched you.  How fucked up is that?”

The fingers against his skin disappear and find the knobs of his neck instead, a thumb playing with the short hairs at the nape.  He eases into the touch to still some of the electricity of Louis’ words, the way they fuse into his bones like marrow.  Zayn refuses to bother with his cold tea, settles long fingers around the neck of the vodka bottle when Louis offers it up, takes a messy swig that dribbles down his chin and throat.

Louis laughs brightly, jagged nails scratching at Zayn’s ink.  He joins him, wincing at the sharp tang of the alcohol, the way it burns down his throat.  He knocks their ankles together and itches at Louis’ belly with his fingers.

“Love is a bit manic, right?” Louis offers between the instrumentation of their combined breathing and the hollows their fingers find.

Zayn wants to find the stardust in his eyes, the way his smile is probably crooked like Zayn’s, the stubble he feels when Louis buries another laugh in his neck.  He wonders how small the world is around them when they’re this close, sharing as many secrets as they can find in the sharp shadows.

He closes his eyes on the darkness, waits for the wavy spots the liquor brings up and catches his fingers on the collar of Louis’ shirt.

“Think I love him, bro,” he whispers, resolve fading for the smile that perks over his lips.

“Yeah,” Louis breathes into his hair, “you sort of always have, arsehole.”

 

/*/

 

It starts in an uneven row of blush blues, flickers of soft violet that ripple like a sound system measuring decibels.  The darkness is coaxed back half an inch by a quiet distribution of neon azure, hints of summer gold chasing after those always present strokes of ivory.  Silver fades into an ominous pink, charcoal redirected by sketchy green that’s almost a solid tangerine.  Pewter dissipates under the rise of rose and he thinks it’s a dream –

Even though he’s been dreaming in black and white for weeks now.

He stutters on his first breath, catches the arc of the sunrise over a bare, tanned shoulder.  The strokes of the clouds smudged by colors in the sky, the wavelength of the spectrum beating like a drum behind his lids.  His throat is too dry to swallow and his hands are shaking too much to grip at anything so his tongue rolls over chapped lips and his spine coils around fear like a life raft.  The sheets are white but look spray painted gold by the halo of the sun and the curtains are a thick burgundy, edged by flaxen accents and there’s some stupid, old painting on one of the walls and he can pick out every freckle across Liam’s arm.

The gasp in his throat barely makes it out before he’s counting every eyelash beating against Liam’s soft, round cheeks.  His lips are pinker than original bubblegum, scarce sprinkling of stubble across his jaw and his birthmark stands out against the milky complexion of his throat.

He blinks rapidly and everything comes back bleary, but not like in a fading dream sequence.  No, it’s a streamline of haziness from the tears and he chokes on his next breath to stop them.  The back of his hand scrubs at his eyes and he’s ready for pitch black again.  He’s ready for nothing.  He’s ready for discomfort and disenchantment and disillusion.

He’s not ready for the flecks of mahogany and the riptide of copper and the streaks of sienna in Liam’s eyes when he flutters them open.

“What’s wrong?  Nightmare?” Liam groans, pushing his face into the mountain of pillows dividing them.  He’s reaching out, absently, to find Zayn’s fingers and Zayn watches the way they curl naturally around Liam’s, the way their hands fit.

“I can see.”

Liam mumbles into the fluff, nodding before his spine stiffens.  Zayn finally swallows and measures the stretch of Liam’s torso, the bare skin that’s a soft gold under the sunlight.  The contraction of muscles and the definition that’s barely visible in Liam’s hip, the way the sheets are pulled far enough down that he can see the cleft of Liam’s arse just beneath the waistband of his boxers.

“You can what?” Liam asks drowsily, peeking his head up.

Zayn nods once.  A second time.  He tightens his fingers around Liam’s and flutters his lashes until the tears stick, teeth tugging mercilessly at a bottom lip.

“ _You_ ,” he says with strong exertion, spare fingers running the maze of prickly hair on Liam’s head.  The touch is the same but the way the bristles move, the sharp shade of an earthy blonde at the roots steals his breath.

“Mate, I can see you.  And the sun.  And the fucking silly Incredible Hulk pants you’re wearing,” Zayn exhales, the words a rush, a heap of thoughts that he can’t quite control.

Liam pushes up on one forearm, the muscles twisting beneath his skin.  Zayn watches the manipulation of four chevrons when he sits up, follows Liam with the sheets slipping to their thighs.

“You can – you can see me?” Liam stutters out, clipping his own lip with his teeth.

Zayn nods again, endorphins playing a mastery of tricks over his senses.  He sniffs and scratches at Liam’s knuckles until he starts breathing again.

Thick, calloused fingers reach out, draw shapes over his cheek, under his eyelids.  A thumb outlines his parted lips and Zayn grins against the bitten thumbnail, scoots just a little closer.  He laughs at the way Liam’s fingers scrape away thick tears still weighing down his lashes and Liam tackles him into an ocean of sheets and blankets and a hill of pillows.

“ _Me_?  You can actually see me, mate?”

Zayn snorts, shoving at Liam’s shoulder but he goes pliant when Liam straddles him, brackets his legs with strong thighs.

“Not much to look at,” Zayn swears, tilting a crooked grin up at Liam.

Liam chuckles, a full breathy sound that’s accompanied by a dopey smile that Zayn hasn’t seen in too long.

There’s wrinkles in Liam’s brow and his cheeks are thinner and his lips look swollen from last night’s kisses – subtle, long, meaningful kisses that came across as playful but read like the longest novel about falling in love Zayn’s ever read.  His smile is wider than the reach of the sun and shadows play along the best features of his face – his nose, the corners of his mouth, the thickness of his eyebrows.

“You look amazing,” Zayn says, his voice gone soft from lack of oxygen, not intention.

Liam grins and that first hint of amber rose that peeks across his cheeks knocks the breath out of Zayn.

He’s wanted this – a hotel room in a foreign city with warm sheets and their legs tangled and Liam’s fingers in his hair and a mess of lube and a cock slipping into him – after a third date and before the _‘I love you’_ and with a map leading to _I will love you ‘til death do us part_.

But he can settle for this.

He can settle for the way the sun bleaches the dark out of the sky and steals across Liam’s broad shoulders and highlights all of his ink while they stare at each other like it’s the first time –

Not that he’s forgotten that McDonald’s and Liam’s bright laughter or his sticky smile from too much Coke or the sound of his voice when talking about when Bane broke Batman’s back.  He hasn’t forgotten holding hands in anticipation or Liam’s hair falling in his eyes and he’ll never forget their exchanged looks, nervous smiles just before Niall and Harry and Louis became the second biggest piece of this thing between them.

“It’s not gonna go away, right?  You’re not gonna close your eyes and forget what I look like and – “

Zayn giggles, lifts a hand to press his palm into Liam’s cheek.  His nose scrunches when Liam’s eyes crinkle and he shuts his eyes on the dare.  He squeezes them tight until silver circles burst across the darkness and bats them open with expectation.  His teeth nip at his lip when all of the colors swirl around Liam like he’s the sun, like its second nature for everything to revolve around this goofy boy.

“Not gonna go away,” Zayn promises and he loves the way Liam’s thighs squeeze around his hips when he sneaks a couple of fingers across Liam’s naked collar.

Liam’s hands cup his face and he leans in to press their foreheads together and this is better than what he expected.  It’s more than what he anticipated with those large brown eyes and the cold nuzzle of a nose and palms dragging over his stubble.

“I know this might be a bit inappropriate – “

And Zayn can’t remember a time when all of the best sentences didn’t start with that.

“ – but I’m in love with you, mate,” Liam says quickly like it’s too painful to hold onto.  “Tommo said I should tell you and Niall begged me to and Harry’s sworn to burn all of my _Captain America_ comics when we get back to London if I didn’t.”

Zayn’s lips twitch at the curve of Liam’s smile, at the honesty in his expression.  He closes his eyes again just to breathe in Liam’s scent and to feel the warmth of his fingers and to listen to the morning traffic outside.

“Gotten a bit soppy on me while I was blind, have you?” Zayn teases, bites at the _‘can I say the same to you’_ because he wants Liam’s words to stick.

Liam pokes at his chest with a rough finger, laughing against his lips and Zayn tastes the late night sips of coffee Liam had while they fought sleep through a marathon of bad science fiction films on television.  There’s something sweet under Liam’s tongue – leftover red vines – and his teeth test Liam’s resistance to pain with quick bites to his lips.  It’s the second, third, hundredth kiss he’ll remember but not as much as this one.

Not with his eyes wide open while Liam’s are shut.  Not while he watches the way Liam’s face goes soft, eyelashes humming over his cheeks, quiet little sounds Liam tries to hold on to but can’t quite when Zayn pushes his tongue inside.

He’s embarrassed when Liam rolls his hips just a little, their cocks fattening up together, but he braves it with a laugh and a shove to Liam’s shoulder that knocks him off balance.  His hands fly to Liam’s hips, steady him, and he isn’t crushed beneath the palm Liam has flat on his chest.

His free hand drifts up an arm, tickles over the goosebumps that follow in the wake of his light touches.  He cups the back of Liam’s neck, draws him close enough that their mouths brush but never press.

“I sort of love you too, mate,” Zayn mumbles with teeth biting his lips swollen and Liam’s eyes tracing his every twitch, motion.  He licks away the dryness, tilts his head sideways so the sun doesn’t blind him.  “Think I sorted that out, babe.”

“Good,” Liam hums, commandeering a kiss because he _can_ , not because he’s trying to be obvious.  “I’d hate to kick your arse for breaking my heart.”

Zayn snorts, wrinkles his nose at Liam’s kisses before bucking upward.

“I might’ve gotten my vision back,” Zayn mumbles against the soft of Liam’s lips, the sharp sting of his teeth, “but you can still help a mate out, yeah?  Test out that gag reflex thing.”

Liam rolls his eyes but doesn’t push away.  He cheats and grinds his hips downward until their cocks blurt out thick drops of precome, staining the front of their pants.

“What gag reflex?” Liam teases, licking a Zayn’s lips and their laughter is swallowed by their desperate kisses.

Zayn finds him beautiful like this with sweet smiles, sleepy eyes, pillow imprints still embedded into his cheek and _appreciation_ feels so mild, so tame when Liam grins down at him.  The way Liam’s muscles flex when he lifts and rocks back down onto Zayn, the pull of his skin when Zayn pushes up on his elbows for a kiss.  The chase of his laughter, his half-arsed attempt to get away when Zayn drags his lips down Liam’s neck, the long column and the hollow just near his birthmark.

Their fingers fit together between the sheets, curling around each other and they work their way out of their underwear just as Louis pounds on the other side of their door.

“If you two are getting off, Harry wants video and Niall wants low quality pictures,” he calls out with the sharpest twist of a smile in his voice.

“None of that X-Tube quality shit, either.  No poor lighting and bad angles, mates.  I want to be able to read the brand of lube you two use,” Harry adds, the boom of his voice just like Zayn remembers years ago.

Niall clears his throat while Liam marks the lowest extremity of Zayn’s neck with his teeth and Zayn’s groan is _shameful_ but he doesn’t care.  “We expect that since Zayn can’t see, you’ll be so kind as to talk him through proper blowjob techniques and, _naturally_ , he’ll have to be the bottom.”

“Naturally, I planned to be anyway,” Zayn mumbles into Liam’s collar and the moan he receives is so far from that watered down stuff in low budget porn.

“Should we tell them?” Liam wonders, circling his lips over Zayn’s shoulder and recycling the same breaths he’s been practicing in the shower when he thinks Zayn wasn’t listening.

Zayn giggles, uses his spare hand to trace Liam’s hip and grip his arse and tickle between the cheeks just to tease.

“We could,” Zayn whispers, letting Liam’s hips pin his to the mattress but he ruts up in defiance when Liam’s free hand searches the sheets for his wallet and an unused condom.  “But those fucks have been keeping secrets from us for forever now.”

“Like Niall and Hazza,” Liam laughs, the sound breathy when Zayn tilts his hips up and grinds.

“And Lou being in love with Eleanor,” Zayn adds, breathless when Liam sucks a pretty mark to his collar, over the Arabic and he thinks he wants to ink the shape there.

“And us,” Liam mutters, shy and reserved.  The color of his cheeks are bright beneath the sun and the love in his eyes is neon, electric, _glaring_.  It sinks into Zayn’s soul and he swallows at the way Liam hides his smile.

“I didn’t know.”

“I know,” Liam insists against Zayn’s lips, bruising them with force.  “I didn’t think I should tell you, mate.  Especially not then and definitely not when you couldn’t see.”

“I was terrified,” Zayn admits because being brave feels like the mantra of the moment.  He corners his breathing and solidifies the oxygen while Liam drags his lips across his cheek, down his throat.  “I thought I wouldn’t see me mum or me sisters or you lot.  I thought I’d never see you and, fucking hell, it wasn’t worth it, babe.  None of it was gonna be worth it if I couldn’t see your face.”

“Stupid,” Liam snickers, still rotating his hips, still growing thicker and firmer against Zayn’s hip.

Zayn’s movements stutter and he bites down onto Liam’s shoulder for lack of words.

“This could’ve been avoided,” he gasps, even with Louis still knocking at the door and Paul joining the fray because _‘boys, there are_ rules _about noise and Harry stop snogging Niall in the hallway.’_

“Where’s the fun in that?” Liam whispers and uses all of his strength to roll them until Zayn’s sitting just north of his thighs and his erection is sneaking between his cheeks.

Zayn groans, low and deep in his throat and their kisses taste like affection.

He keeps his eyes on Liam’s stretched smiles and the shape of his hands on Zayn’s hips and the way the sun blots colors across their skin until he’s dizzy and can’t quite remember how not to cherish every aspect of Liam Payne.

 

/*/

 

“Are you quite certain about this?”

It’s been a month of interviews and their first concert back, as a unit, is at Madison Square Gardens.  A month of doctor’s appointments and Harry’s constant _‘are you sure it’s permanent?’_ and Louis’ careful observations and a week back in Bradford with his family.  A long month of hiding out at Liam’s London flat and Niall admitting he’s in love with Harry, too, and retraining his eyes to focus on everything all at once rather than just the small things –

And a month of waking up in Liam’s bed and quiet walks in the morning before the sun reaches its peak and trading comic books with their fingers interlocked and sharing coffee in the gold hollows of a sunrise.  A month of soft kisses they don’t forget and hard ones they feel shameless over.  A month of Liam’s oversized footie jerseys on his back and marathons of Nolan films and sloppy blowjobs in the shower or Liam’s laugh inked to his neck while they watch the pattering rain drench the city a smoke grey that he’s seen a dozen times behind his eyelids.

A month of Louis bringing him coffee most mornings and a week of helping Harry plan out his first proper date with Niall – a disaster in itself because Harry burns the toast and overcooks the pasta and Liam walks in on them shagging with spaghetti sauce staining their mouths.  And a month of memorizing the flecks of mossy green in Louis’ blue eyes and the creaminess of Harry’s skin versus all of the ink and the width of Niall’s smile when someone makes him laugh.  A month of sunsets and star-stricken skies and the way the shops in London look against the foggy landscape.

It’s been a month stretched out with _‘Zayn Malik has returned’_ and _‘doctors say, though the blindness was temporary, it may have some residual side effects’_ and ‘ _Malik has promised half of his earnings to a charity for blind children’_ before he tires of the sound of his own name written in black and white everywhere – and he hates things devoid of color now because living without it felt so toxic.

A month of lazy kisses, desperate hand jobs and too many _almost_ moments backstage that leave him aching and Liam flustered.

“Is it too tight?”

A smile quirks up against his mouth, his lips shifting, his tongue licking out to slick away the dryness.  His teeth bite into a corner of his lip and he shakes his head.

“No, that’s quite fine,” he mumbles, reaching up to toy with the edges of the dark fabric.

He blinks his eyes open against the tight material of the blindfold drawn over them and it’s the first time, in too long, he’s permitted himself to succumb to the shadows and darkness again.

It’s been a month of the bedside lamp always on and chasing the sun until it blinks away in the evening and adding massive amounts of bright, bright colors to his art pieces for the _sensory overload_ of it all.  He’s not _afraid_ – not completely – of the inky dark or the way the night feels suffocating now, but everything behind his skin aches for the reminder that living without sight still cripples him in his strongest moments.

Fingers coil around his wrist, a bit possessively, and lead him to the edge of a bed he’s swam in for weeks now.  He gasps at the cool sheets when they kiss at his knees and crawls toward the warm heat guiding him, tries to find his balance but he’s not used to this anymore.  Not like he was.  Not like he never hopes to be again.

There’s been too many almost moments and could’ve been seconds that his heart palpitates for this.  It beats at a rapid pace and his palms grow slick with sweat before strong hands find his waist and settle him into position.  His thighs spread and he brackets Liam’s legs like a submissive deviant.  His back arches at the spread of glossy fingers on his skin, his spine cracking with a whine when kisses are spread across his flushed chest and the drag of Liam’s barely-there stubble stutters his heartbeat.

His fingers trace over the contours of muscles and the round of a collarbone until he can find the nape of Liam’s neck, loving the thicker thatch of hair there as Liam draws masterpieces over his skin.

“You can tell me when to stop, alright mate,” Liam proposes with his lips still etching lazy shapes over Zayn’s chest, teeth catching on a nipple.

Zayn groans, garbles the sound in his throat before nodding.  The blindfold restricts too much – like the swollen edge of Liam’s lips and the blush staining his cheeks and the way the moonlight probably plays across their skin like bluish flames.  He shifts his knees over the bendy mattress and permits Liam’s hands to shape him into place before shuddering out a breath when sticky, slick fingers drag down the center of his cheeks.

Too many _so close_ and _right there, we’re right there_ thoughts echo in his mind and he steadies shaky hands on Liam’s shoulder to lower himself onto a wet finger.  Its scented lube – via a very cheeky Harry – and silly rose petals across the carpet – courtesy a softer Niall – and the iPod dock is playing filthy music that leads Zayn’s hips to grind and chase away from the finger when it goes knuckle-deep.  His spine coils and Liam pets at his hip like an _‘okay’_ and a _‘we can stop right here’_ that forges something bright and burning under his ribcage.

“Remember last weekend,” Liam whispers into his skin, licking at the hollow of his collarbone and stretching warm fingers across his arse to separate the muscle, “when you let me finger you in Manchester, in that hotel bathroom while Harry and Louis shared a fry-up on the other side?”

Zayn gasps, twisting his hips and biting at his lips until he meets the second knuckle.

“You told me to _relax_ ,” Zayn whimpers, lilting his hips and expanding his chest for the scent of cherries and mountain springs from Liam’s soap.

“And that we’d never have to take this any farther than you wanted,” Liam adds, biting sweetly at Zayn’s neck, licking at an early morning bruise that was accompanied by a slow blowjob and Liam’s tongue on his arse.

Zayn squeezes his eyes shut and clenches around Liam’s thick finger and shakes when Liam’s thumb traces the stretched rim.

“I meant it,” Liam promises, his voice hoarse but so drawn around the words that Zayn scratches dull nails into his hair for something to center him.

“Don’t be daft,” Zayn mumbles with his lip still embedded between unforgiving teeth.

“Don’t be brave,” Liam counters and his lips stain the center of Zayn’s chest a color he can’t view but wants to ink there with a pair of wings and stories about how this all started.

Liam surprises him with the second finger and a tongue between his lips, a free hand combing through his thick hair until it snags on the ends and pulls away.

“Fuck,” Zayn whines before Liam attaches his lips to the long column of neck Zayn offers.

“I told you I loved how tight you were,” Liam reminds him, smiling into the flesh Zayn can’t help but submit to him.

“Better than any bird you did this to,” Zayn laughs because it was silly and Liam’s only half good at this – talking dirty, being playful, trying to sound much more dominating than he really is.  “Tighter than the last cunt you fucked.”

“She was horrid,” Liam giggles, twisting and separating and stretching Zayn’s hole with genius fingers.

Liam’s clever with his kisses, adding the right amount of pressure that Zayn slips further down and only winces for half a second at how his walls burn from the pressure.

“C’mere,” Liam pleads when Zayn tips his head back for a tight moan, one that rips his throat raw.

Zayn feels around for those soft cheeks, the square jaw, the bruised lips and guides himself like he’s done enough times before toward Liam’s lips.  He can hear the hollow of Liam’s breathing and the taste on his tongue – salty from crisps and sweet from apple juice – washes out Zayn’s wonder.  He strokes at Liam’s taut muscles, reflexes an agent of proposition when he swirls his hips around the forward thrust of Liam’s fingers.

“You don’t play fair,” Liam groans, fingers tapping at something that has Zayn stretching out and pleading.

Fuck, _begging_.

“You don’t either,” Zayn murmurs with a heavy tongue and eyes fighting against the shadows before them.

There’s lube sliding down the back of his thigh when Liam withdraws two just to shove three fingers back in, slicker this time.  It’s a little too much and Zayn’s gravity is disintegrated off the way Liam drags in and out of him.  His legs spread wider, a free hand not in Liam’s hair scratching down his chest and thumbing at the wet tip of his cock where it’s pushed and curved against Liam’s belly.  He doesn’t really move as much as he _trembles_ around Liam’s fingers.  His muscles lose some of the tension, a rapid repetition of _relax, relax, relax_ in his head before Liam’s fingers twist and _right there_.

There’s a blur of spots behind his lids – harsh oranges and splattered yellow and rancid reds – and his teeth bite his lip raw as he clenches around Liam’s fingers.  It’s an unexpected exploration of how much Zayn can take and how much Liam’s willing to give before he goes still and his cock dribbles out precome.

“Wet,” Liam giggles, licking around the playing card across Zayn’s ribs.  His palm presses to the small of Zayn’s back, forcing him down and the tip of his middle finger pushes at him again.  “And relax, babe.  I want it tight but – “

“You can’t,” Zayn stutters out, wanting to rip away the blindfold and show Liam just how black his eyes are but he can’t remember muscle function when Liam’s fingers are ruining him.  “You _can’t_ talk like that and expect us to make it all the way to the, well, you know.”

“I don’t know,” Liam whispers, his voice smoky like he’s been through a pack of Zayn’s cigarettes.  “Care to tell me, mate?”

Zayn whimpers and locks in on symmetry even though that sounds ridiculous when he keeps rocking on Liam’s fingers for _more_ , so much more.

He feels his way to the brass headboard and locks his fingers around it, his unused ones tangled with Liam’s somewhere on one of the pillows.  He breathes out and slips down and Liam brushes his prostate in one of those stealthy moves he loves.  His hips hiccup a motion and he’s startled by the way Liam groans louder than him, like the tightness is inviting and the way Zayn’s body bends is exhilarating.

His cock bobs in front of him, tapping Liam’s stomach, brushing over his own fattened dick and it’s silly how much lube they use to get past this point.  Their kisses are messy and half-past desperate with Zayn’s keens meeting Liam’s whines in the fractured center of their mouths.  He’s shattered when Liam’s fingers slip out of him and breathless when Liam kisses him slowly, sliding the head of his cock over Zayn’s hole repeatedly until it almost catches.

He never thought he’d be this needy or lost on someone but Liam’s fingers on his hip steady him and he reaches back with a shaky hand to line Liam up.  The pressure in his chest nearly explodes before Liam kisses his throat with quiet promises Zayn can’t hear over the owl outside and the dark, dark night or the countless tries at breathing normal he’s been working at for minutes now.

“Think you can take it?” Liam mumbles into his shoulder and Zayn wants to see him.

He wants to see if Liam’s cheeks flush when he talks like this or if he looks eager like Zayn is sure he does or how sweet his smile is when Zayn nods.  He blinks against the blindfold instead, takes his lip between his lips and sinks down onto the head before he can regret anything.

Zayn is shy about the first moan or the way he aches for this stretch and how much thicker Liam is compared to his fingers.  There’s a careful hand on his hip, stopping him after the first few inches but he fights against it to slide lower.  He lets his thighs slip apart and his fingers dig into Liam’s shoulder with the hiss spread across his teeth.  Liam moans into the abandoned spaces of oxygen and Zayn’s muscles coil around his cock until he bottoms out.

Liam works him open with shallow thrusts, stretching him further, loosening his resolve.  Zayn coos and tries not to slump forward but he’s so pliant for Liam.  He’s so – _open_.

The first twitch of Liam’s hips, like he’s scared to do much more, shifts up Zayn’s spine and he nods for the words too heavy for his tongue to carry.  He breathes through his nose and licks at the salty sweat on his upper lip before Liam thrusts up into him properly.  It’s natural for him to lift up with Liam but he stays unsteady on his knees while Liam sinks back down, the head the only thing still nestled inside of him.  He feels nearly barren and the crave itches over his skin before the smack of a hip meets his arse.

He shivers out a sound, teeth knocking when he shuts his mouth at the snicker Liam releases.  He feels around Liam’s chest, twists at a nipple in retaliation and feels so shameful at the way he slides back down on the root of Liam’s cock for the fullness –

And that’s what it is.  He feels so _full_ and spread and weightless.  He rotates his hips to feel the throb of Liam’s cock, to feel the way it works his muscles backwards into a tight coil rather than a loose vice.

His lips part for nothing while his fingers slide up the sweat on Liam’s chest.  There’s a silent echo of moans in his throat and he grinds down to meet each of Liam’s thrusts, letting Liam control the speed and the amplitude and the escalation of what they’re doing.  He listens to the squeak of the bed, feels his grip loosen on the headboard, tastes the musk in the air and he’s drugged on the scent of Liam’s sweat and youth and shampoo.

“It’s alright, yeah?” Liam asks between harsh breaths, properly fucking up into Zayn.

Zayn nods, pins down his lip before he says something idiotic.  He loses his grip and falters forward but Liam catches him with a hand on his shoulder and fingers biting into his hip.

“I was afraid I wouldn’t be good enough,” Liam admits, snapping his hips.  It’s not so much a jackhammer as it is a hurricane of thrusts that swirl and awaken the beast buried in the depth of the sea.  “Didn’t think I could make you moan or feel something.”

Zayn whimpers, scrunching his nose against the blindfold.  The darkness strips away the bravado, leaves him vulnerable and his senses target the fullness that Liam makes him feel – in his gut, in his arse, in his heart.

“Do you feel it, babe?” Liam inquires, a hypnotic smugness in his voice like Louis’ been teaching him how not to give a shit.

“Fuck off,” Zayn groans, grinding back to meet Liam’s hips.  His cock is wet, slick at the tip and his hands are too occupied with the sheets and Liam’s jaw to bother touching himself.

“And you like it?” Liam wonders, slowing his movements, rotating his hips until just the head teases his hole.  “Can you get loud?”

Zayn fights against it, but not on purpose.  He keeps gasping on these little breathy moans that sound pathetic but he can’t help it when Liam grips his hips tighter and just rocks up into him.

“You were so beautiful when you couldn’t see this world, babe, and I know you hate when people call you that.  You hate it because you’re a proper lad, a strong chap but Zayn,” fingers curl around his chin, tilt it until Zayn thinks he can pick out Liam’s scrunched face through the dark fabric, “you were _beautiful_ and I couldn’t stop wishing I could show you the world without you seeing it.”

_You did_ , Zayn thinks but that’s tragic.  It’s romantic in ways Zayn is not and daft in ways he’s read about in cheesy novels.

He eases his hips back instead, jumps at the way Liam’s fingers dig in and fumbles for a kiss he didn’t know he needed.

He surrenders to Liam’s strength, loses his equilibrium when Liam rolls them on the bed and the lack of pressure when Liam accidentally slides out only steals his breath for a moment before Liam quickly sinks back in.  Liam brackets him with his broader frame and Zayn feels protected, safe, the things he was every second Liam was by his side.

Liam smiles into his neck while his hips barrel down and Zayn tips his head back.  His fingers work against the sweat on Liam’s spine and Liam pounds into him like he’s close.  It’s a lack of communication and just the sound of their moans chasing each other before he arches his spine and offers so much of himself to Liam.

“This might be unbelievably corny coming from me – “

“When are you not, man,” Zayn laughs out or at least he thinks he does because everything passing his lips sounds like a grunt or a moan or a whimper.

Liam bites at his neck and fucks him a little harder, something Zayn loves.

“I love you,” Liam says, so soft and defenseless that it tattoos the words to Zayn’s core.

Zayn grins, lets Liam unfasten the blindfold and blinks against the crowding shadows until he can make out half of Liam’s face.

He looks so fucking happy and amazed and Zayn tries to forget the times Liam’s told him this already so that this feels like the first time.

“Yeah,” Zayn breathes out, spreading his legs a little wider, tilting his hips up until Liam fucks right against his prostate.  “Completely corny, man.”

He swallows down his heart to whisper _‘and I love you too, babe, just so you know’_ when Liam buries his laugh into the crook of Zayn’s neck and Liam’s spine goes so tight when he comes inside of Zayn.  It’s wet and Zayn pulses with the tremors, buries a hand in Liam’s hair and pleads for more.

Liam chokes out a sound, keeps rocking and fucking even though he’s half-hard and sensitive until Zayn can slide a hand between them and jerk himself off the rest of the way.

“Liam,” he shudders and splashes wet come between rutting bodies and Liam’s right there, wrapping a loose fist around Zayn to stroke out the hot, sticky liquid.  He keeps rotating his wrist and thumbing the wet slit and Zayn presses into the pillow, closes his eyes with flushed cheeks and every piece of darkness hugging his skin.

The sheets tangled around their sweat-stained skin and Liam drapes kisses over his shoulder while Zayn blindly searches the linen for Liam’s hand.  He keeps his eyes closed for all of Liam’s kisses and fits their fingers together by touch alone.

“I promised you that you’d be okay,” Liam mumbles into his collar and Zayn rolls onto his stomach to get closer, shamelessly showing the arch of his spine and the shiny remnants of lube across the back of his thighs and his stretched hole before absently finding Liam’s lips in the dark.

His first thought is _falling in love is a lot like breathing_ and every thought after that is about _Liam_.

He doesn’t need sight to know what that looks like.

**Author's Note:**

> I hope the ending wasn't too abrupt or left some things unanswered. I also hope this wasn't too angsty for anyone. I seem to have this thing for writing a broody/struggling Zayn. I need to find a happier version of him to write.
> 
> Thanks for all of the love and support on Tumblr/here. If this sucks, thank you for taking the time to read it. Like I said, I just wanted to write and this came about.
> 
> Love you -- Jesse xx :)


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